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PICTURE PLAN OF EDINBURGH. 




A. AND C. BLACK, LONDON. 



LIST OF VOLUMES IN THE 


PEEPS AT 


MANY LANDS 


AND CITIES SERIES 


EACH CONTAINING 13 FULL-PAGE 


ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR 


BELGIUM 


IRELAND 


BURMA 


ITALY 


CANADA 


JAMAICA 
JAPAN 


CEYLON 


CHINA 


KOREA 


CORSICA 


MOROCCO 


DENMARK 


NEW ZEALAND 


EDINBURGH 


NORWAY 


EGYPT 


- PARIS 


ENGLAND 


PORTUGAL 


FINLAND 


RUSSIA 


FRANCE 


SCOTLAND 


GERMANY 


SIAM 


GREECE 


SOUTH AFRICA 


HOLLAND 


SOUTH SEAS 


HOLY LAND 


SPAIN 


ICELAND 


SWITZERLAND 


INDIA 

A LARGER VOLUM 




E IN THE SAME STYLE 


THE 


WORLD 


Containing 37 full-page illustrations in colour 


PUBLISHED BY ADAH AND CHARLES BLACK 


SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 



AGENTS 

AMERICA . . . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64 A 66 FHTH AVBNUH, NEW YORK 

AUSTRALASIA . OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

305 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE 

CANADA . . THE M ACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. 
St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street, TORONTO 

TJTDIA .... MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. 
Macmillan Building, BOMBAY 
109 Bow Bazaar Street. CALCUTTA 




THE CASTLE AND SCOTT MONUMENT. 









INSCRIBED 

TO 

MY VERY DEAR FRIENDS 

SIR LEWIS and LADY McIVER 



S&atyr- 



Oh City of my memories ! 

Oh City of my heart ! 
I love the rain that lashes you, 

The wind that makes me smart ; 
Your beauty in the sunshine 

No mortal can forget, — 
But most I love the smell of you 

When every stone is wet ! 

Your New Town's stately rhythm, 

Your Old Town's rugged rhyme ; 
How many scores of comedies 

You've laughed at in your time ! 
In what a host of tragedies 

Your stones play silent part, — 
Oh City of grey mists and dreams ! 

Oh City of my heart ! 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. " EDINA, SCOTIA'S DARLING SEAT " 
II. " MINE OWN ROMANTIC TOWN " . 
III. "THE GREY METROPOLIS OF THE NORTH " 
IV. STORIES OF THE PAST : TWO MIRACLES . 
V. STORIES OF THE PAST : BATTLES, MURDERS 
AND SUDDEN DEATHS 
VI. EDINBURGH GIRLS AND BOYS IN OLD DAYS 
VII. GIRLS AND BOYS OF MODERN EDINBURGH 
VIII. HOOD AND GOWN .... 

IX. WIG AND GOWN ..... 
X. WINTER IN EDINBURGH 
XI. EDINBURGH IN SUMMER 



5 
9 

13 

22 

27 
36 
45 
56 
65 
78 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



THE CASTLE AND SCOTT MONUMENT 



FACING PAGE 



EDINBURGH FROM "REST AND BE THANKFUL 
PRINCES STREET ....... 

HOLYROOD PALACE AND PART OF THE ANCIENT ABBEY 
THE MESSENGER FROM FLODDEN 
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS 

"GREENBREEKS" LEADING THE POTTER ROW 
" BICKER " .... 

SIR WALTER SCOTT .... 

JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND 

THE CHURCH OF ST. GILES 

JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE .... 

LADY STAIR'S CLOSE .... 

A Picture Plan of Edinburgh inside front cover 



Frontispiece v/ 

8/ 

17 v 

24 

33 
40 



BOYS IN A 



AS A BOY 



49 
56 

65 
72 
8l 

88 



EDINBURGH 



CHAPTER I 

"edina, scotia's darling seat." 

A little English girl asked me the other day : " How 
big is Edinburgh ? Is it as big as Amersham?" 

Now, Amersham is a little town in Buckinghamshire 
— one street of lovely old red-roofed houses, and the 
spire of an ancient parish Church, and the chimney of a 
new brewery, — and that is all. You can walk through 
it in less than five minutes, and be out in the fields and 
woods again. So I tried to explain that Edinburgh 
was altogether different and very much bigger. "It is 
the Capital of Scotland, just as London is the Capital of 
England," the little English girl was told. " Oh, I see," 
she said ; " then is it as big as London?" 

Then Scottish pride had to be curbed, and Scottish 
truthfulness had to confess that no, it was not nearly 
so big as London. " It is about the size of — of — but 
what other towns do you know?" 

" Well," said the little English girl, " you see, I don't 
know any other towns except Amersham and London !" 

So she had to be left picturing Edinburgh as some- 
thing between London and Amersham, and I do not 
feel she has a very distinct idea of Edinburgh. I 
could only tell her I hoped to persuade her to come 
and see it for herself some day. 

And again the difficulty confronts me, for there is 
nothing so hopeless as to try and give other people a 

5 



6 Edinburgh 

picture of a town they do not know. It is easy to tell 
its story, but impossible to give its portrait ; and again 
I can only hope to persuade my readers to come and 
see Edinburgh for themselves some day. And Edin- 
burgh is worth coming to see, for it is a picture as well 
as a poem. 

Some towns are very beautiful, and some are very 
interesting ; just as some people are pleasant to look 
at, and some people are amusing to talk to ; but 
Edinburgh is both, and so is well worth making friends 
with. Perhaps we might look at Edinburgh first, 
before we begin to talk to her. And the first thing one 
sees in looking at Edinburgh is her Castle, for it stands 
high up above the town on the " Castle Rock." Fancy 
a great town with an abrupt, rocky hill rising out of 
the very middle of it, — crags and cliffs sheer down into 
the pretty public gardens at its base, close by the gay 
shops and the traffic and the houses of the town. And 
when, walking along the crowded, busy, cheerful street, 
you raise your eyes, you find that the grim hill is 
topped by a mighty castle — a town in itself — walls and 
battlements and towers looking almost part of the rock 
on which they are built. 

The great mer de glace which covered Scotland in 
glacial times, in the Edinburgh district flowed from 
west to east, and consequently most of the hills in 
and near Edinburgh stand straight and steep and 
high to the west, and slope down gradually, like a 
cat's back, to the east. The Castle Rock is shaped 
thus ; and down the ridge to the east, — the backbone of 
the cat, — the principal street of the Old Town of 
Edinburgh descends for one mile to Holyrood Palace. 
And the Castle Rock is not the only hill in Edinburgh, 



" Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat " 7 

for Holyrood Palace lies against a background of the 
green slopes of Arthur's Seat, a great hill nearly a 
thousand feet high, and shaped like a couchant lion. 

Until about a hundred years ago this used to be the 
whole extent of the town of Edinburgh — the Castle, 
and the long line of street down to Holyrood, and all 
the little straggling " closes " and " wynds " off this 
main line of street, like very short ribs out of the 
backbone. It must have been a very uncomfortable 
town to live in, for there was not enough room ; and 
yet it seemed impossible to extend it, because it was 
all built on the ridge of this hill, and because, below 
the hill, along under the ridge, and lapping the foot of 
the cliffs of the Castle Rock, was a great deep lake — 
" the Nor' Loch." And at the lower end of the street, 
down in the plain in which Holyrood lies, was only a 
narrow valley between two hills — Arthur's Seat and 
Calton Hill. What was to be done ? It was as if the 
town were perched on an island, surrounded by lochs 
and hills. It was certainly very picturesque, and 
visitors admired it very much ; but the inhabitants 
could hardly breathe, and the little children could not 
grow. And then suddenly, just over one hundred 
years ago, Edinburgh had a really great Lord Provost, 
Lord Provost Drummond, and he saw how it could be 
done. The Nor' Loch was drained, a huge bridge 
flung across the hollow, houses and buildings sprang 
up on the other side, and soon all the country lanes 
and fields between Edinburgh and the sea were turned 
into broad town streets and squares. And this is the 
New Town of Edinburgh. 

And now, facing the ridge of the High Street, and 
with the bed of the Nor' Loch between filled by public 



8 Edinburgh 

gardens, is Princes Street, the chief street of the New 
Town of Edinburgh. And because it faces the Old 
Town above it, and the Castle, whose hoary cliffs go 
straight down into the gardens, Princes Street is built 
with one side only, like a street split all down the 
middle, — one row of gay shops and clubs and hotels 
and great buildings, one broad stone pavement full of 
people, — and on the opposite side only light railings, 
trees, statues, waiting rows of cabs, and — the view ! 

It is said that Princes Street is different from all 
other streets, and is the finest street in Europe. 

All this is the centre of Edinburgh ; but the town 
now stretches for miles on every side — north, behind 
Princes Street, up slopes and down slopes till it reaches 
the sea ; west, where Princes Street leads to the great 
squares and crescents and terraces where the wealthier 
people live ; east, till Princes Street ends at the foot 
of the third hill, Calton Hill, opposite Arthur's 
Seat — not nearly so big nor so high a hill, and with 
buildings and monuments upon it ; and to the south, 
behind the Old Town, there are suburbs for many 
miles, right out into the country. But it is to the 
High Street and Princes Street and the streets about 
them that tourists come, and that have made Edinburgh 
famous. Unfortunately, anyone can build a new house, 
or buy an old house and alter it or pull it down 
altogether, and many people have no ftding for beauty 
at all ; so a great deal of modern Edinburgh is very 
ugly, and a great deal of Old Edinburgh is much spoilt. 
But Nature has done her best to make it impossible 
for men ever to quite ruin Edinburgh. Nothing can 
alter the Castle Rock, and that wonderful ridge down 
from it to the valley and Holyrood, on which the Old 



" Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat " 9 

Town is built — high houses and gables and spires. 
And nothing can alter Arthur's Seat, the great couchant 
lion guarding the city, 

" Gaunt shoulder to the Capital, and blind eyes to the Bay." 

And then, beyond the city — beyond the massed streets 
and chimneys and steeples, and the patches of green 
trees and gardens among them — nothing can change 
the Forth, to the shores of which the city stretches, 
ending there in her busy harbours. 

These are the points that catch the eye when 
Edinburgh is seen from a distance — the Castle, painted 
grey against the sky, abrupt and impressive out of the 
very centre of the town ; the striking lionlike shape 
of Arthur's Seat ; the miles of houses, up and down on 
heights and in hollows ; every now and then some fine 
building or graceful spire ; and then the gleam of the 
Firth of Forth, and the hills of Fife beyond. 

CHAPTER II 

" MINE OWN ROMANTIC TOWN " 

And now, having looked at Edinburgh, let us ask her 
to talk. What a babble of Voices one hears im- 
mediately ! In the Old Town, voices of Kings and 
Queens, of powerful Churchmen and rulers and states- 
men ; voices of priests and poets and soldiers ; voices 
of women and of martyrs ; voices of lawyers and of 
criminals. And the Voices that we hear down the 
centuries of Scottish history, telling the story of 
Edinburgh, are not all speaking in the Scots tongue — 
many of them are speaking French. 

Very far off, up at the Castle, there is the sound of 

ED. 2 



io Edinburgh 

the Saxon queen, St. Margaret, teaching her splendid 
old warrior husband, Malcolm Canmore, to read. But 
that is over eight hundred years ago, and her voice is 
very faint — I do not believe even Malcolm Canmore is 
listening. There are many Voices up at Edinburgh 
Castle — the voice of every king and queen of Scotland 
has been heard there — Robert the Bruce, and all the 
splendid Scottish Stewarts, and poor Mary, Queen of 
Scots, and Charles I., and Oliver Cromwell. His voice 
was heard in the Banqueting Hall. Ah ! what a noise 
at the Castle ! — the clash of arms, the cries of midnight 
surprises, the shouts of command, the groans of 
prisoners, the prayers of the doomed, the shrieks of the 
tortured ! And there are the voices of women, too, to be 
heard ; — the weak voices of little defenceless princesses, 
sent there for safety ; the voices of nuns, and of power- 
ful abbesses ; the voices of clever queens - regent, 
matching their women's wits against unscrupulous 
nobles ; the brave tones of captives, — noble women, 
imprisoned and ill-treated for their faith, or their loyalty, 
or their politics 

And hark ! There is another voice from the Castle, 
and it can be heard above all the rest, though it is four 
hundred years ago, and is only the little first cry of a 
new-born baby. For he is a most important person, 
that little puny infant, the son of Mary, Queen of 
Scots ; he is afterwards to be James VI. of Scotland, 
and the first king to rule over Scotland and England 
also — England and Scotland, once such bitter enemies, 
now one great kingdom, of whose pasts and present 
each country may be equally proud. 

In the wynds and closes jutting down out of either 
side of the High Street, many famous people have 



" Mine Own Romantic Town " 1 1 

spoken, among them the author of " Robinson Crusoe," 
who lived for some time in Edinburgh, and Robert 
Burns, who visited there ; and again there are women's 
voices — that of her who wrote " The Flowers of the 
Forest," and that of her who wrote " Young Jamie 
lo'ed me weel." They both lived in Edinburgh closes. 

All down the High Street there is a great din — you 
can scarcely hear the Voices for the shouting and the 
fighting and the quarrelling. But when you come to the 
middle of the street, where the High Street becomes the 
Canongate, and where St. Giles's Church stands, there 
is only one voice to be heard, raised loud and insistent 
above all others, — the voice of John Knox, preaching. 

In the Canongate, where all the greatest nobles lived, 
at the Court end of the town beside the royal residence, 
there are very pretty sounds ; — courtiers' voices, soft 
and learned ; sounds of music and dancing ; of love- 
making ; of the reading and reciting of poetry. And 
behind all this is again the sound of praying and chant- 
ing, for Holyrood Palace was built in the fifteenth 
century beside the great twelfth-century Abbey of Holy- 
rood, where the Augustine abbots ruled ; and in the 
Abbey Church all the pious Stewart kings of Scotland 
worshipped, and before its High Altar most of them 
were married, and beneath it some were buried. 

But there are sounds of tragedy also from Holyrood. 
There is Riccio's shriek of terror and agony when the 
murderers came in from behind the tapestry as he sat 
at supper with his Queen, and he was dragged out and 
stabbed to death. 

Round the doors of Holyrood can be heard — from a 
century and a half ago — the sound of excited Gaelic, — 
Gaelic, which many people think is the native tongue of 



12 Edinburgh 

all Scotland, just as they suppose all Scotchmen wear the 
kilt. But Gaelic was welcome in Edinburgh in 1745, 
when Prince Charlie held his Court for a few hopeful 
days at Holyrood, and all the Highland chiefs who had 
flocked to his standard, and the wild caterans that came 
in their trains, were living about the place. 

In the New Town also we can hear Voices, carrying 
on the story of Edinburgh. These are the Voices of 
the last two centuries. Dear, kindly, homely Scottish 
voices, the voices of men and women who lived in 
Edinburgh after its Law Courts and University had been 
given to it, and after its royalty and its nobility had 
been taken from it. 

Very learned words we can hear at every windy 
corner ! They come from the lips of philosophers, of 
historians, of poets, of thinkers, of novelists, of preachers, 
of discoverers, of artists, of scientists, of celebrities of 
every kind. Amongst them there is the voice that told 
so many sufferers they need feel no more pain under the 
surgeon's knife — the voice of the inventor of chloroform. 
There is the voice of Raeburn, the portrait painter ; of 
Hume, the philosopher and historian ; of Carlyle ; of 
Lister; of Henry Dundas, " the King of Scotland"; 
of Lord Jeffrey ; of Lord Cockburn ; of " Christopher 
North"; of Aytoun, who wrote the "Lays of the Cava- 
liers"; and a voice of yesterday — that of Robert Louis 
Stevenson. 

But again there is one Voice in the New Town of 
Edinburgh that dominates all others. No harsh voice 
preaching reformation, this, but a golden voice waking 
the dead Past, and making our Scotland dear and famous 
all the world over. It comes from the New Town, but 
it tells of the Old, — it tells of " Mine own romantic 
town " — it is the voice of Sir Walter Scott. 



" Grey Metropolis of the North ' : 13 

CHAPTER III 

"the grey metropolis of the north" 

That was what Tennyson called Edinburgh. He 
spent only one night there, in summer, and it was — as 
sometimes happens, even in summer, in Edinburgh as 
well as anywhere else — a cold, grey, cloudy day. And 
Tennyson stood at an hotel window in Princes Street, 
and thought of all his own beautiful Arthurian country, 
that he has described in his poetry — rich English 
pasturelands and lazy rivers and " rooky woods," and 
he received a bad impression of Edinburgh which he 
has immortalized in four lines. They always come 
into the mind on a cold, misty day, when the grey 
New Town, with all her broad, uniform streets of dark 
stone terraces and crescents, and her great squares, with 
their formal gardens of lawns and paths and trees, railed- 
in and deserted, are all looking particularly chilly and 
stately and dull. Perhaps this strikes a stranger more 
than it does anyone who lives in Edinburgh, partly 
because those who live there are well accustomed to the 
stately grey gloom of the houses, and partly because 
they also know well all the friendly, cosy rooms that lie 
behind those rather forbidding-looking rows of windows. 
The New Town of Edinburgh, for the reason that 
it was all planned and built at one time, and has not 
merely " growed," like Topsy, is all very even and 
regular. When you look down at it from the Castle 
you see it spread below you, something like a game of 
"noughts and crosses" on a slate. There are three 
great parallel streets, each a mile long, the middle one 
with a large square at either end of it, and smaller 
streets go through these at right angles and at even 



14 Edinburgh 

distances, so that they divide the chief streets into 
blocks. There are also smaller streets that worm their 
way at the backs of the three big streets, and some of 
these used to be good old dwelling streets, but they 
are now all given over to lawyers' offices, printing 
works, small shops, and slums. 

At the east end, the New Town stretches on towards 
Leith Walk, that used to be the famous old road 
between Edinburgh and her port. It is now all shops 
and tramway cars, and very noisy and busy and dirty. 
To the north, that lies away behind the three chief 
streets, is the old-fashioned, very respectable part of the 
town, with dear old solid houses, built about a hundred 
years ago, and full of memories of the cosy old days of 
the early nineteenth century ; but now many of them 
are " to let," and one hears that " prices are going 
down," for people are moving away to the newer and 
more fashionable west end, where the houses are not 
nearly so well-built nor so comfortable. 

Ever since James V. founded the Scottish Law 
Courts there have been a great many lawyers in Edin- 
burgh. Nowadays there are in Edinburgh more 
lawyers than any other kind of man. Most of all these 
great grey stone houses, both at the north side of the 
town and at the west end of it, contain lawyers ; and 
shortly before ten o'clock in the morning they all come 
out, and wend their ways to their day's work, either to 
their offices in the streets of the New Town, or, if 
they be advocates, across Princes Street and up into 
the Old Town, to the Law Courts — " Parliament 
House " — in the High Street. And, later on, the front- 
doors are again opened, and the perambulators are care- 
fully lowered down the front-door steps, and the nurses 



" Grey Metropolis of the North " 15 

and children start for their morning's walk, and about 
the same time the ladies and dogs of the town go out 
to do their morning's shopping. They go to Princes 
Street, and the streets round about ; and the nurses and 
children either go to some gardens, or are tempted also 
to Princes Street by the sunshine and the cheerfulness. 
It is very difficult to walk along Princes Street on a 
fair day, because of the number of perambulators, — 
sometimes two, or even three, abreast. Each contains a 
dear little gold-haired, pink and white, intelligent baby, 
combed and curled, its white capes and laces spread out 
on its cushions, its ornamental rug covering it, its inevit- 
able " Teddy Bear " placed beside it, and its neat nurse, 
as she runs her front wheel into the shins of passers-by, 
or streaks them with mud, looking defiantly and proudly 
ahead over the top of her morning's achievement. 

Twelve o'clock is the brightest and sunniest time in 
Princes Street, especially on Saturday. On a bright 
Saturday " forenoon " — a word not used in England — 
in Princes Street, Lord Tennyson would have recanted 
his words. The crowds are packed ; but there is no 
jostling, as there is in a London street, for everyone 
walks to the right-hand side, and so there are two 
streams of people, one going east and one west. But 
there are little " blocks " in the human traffic where 
groups of friends have met and are chatting. 

The shops of Edinburgh are justly famous. Of 
course they are not all in Princes Street ; many are in 
the other great streets, north or west, but Princes 
Street has perhaps the gayest shop windows. George 
Street, the second of the three chief streets that run 
parallel through the New Town, is very grey and 
dignified and sombre, and permits itself no such 



1 6 Edinburgh 

frivolity as a one-sided aspect, even of the view. In 
the crowds gathered on Saturday morning, the passers- 
by in Princes Street have to stop to admire the windows 
of the flower -shops — carnations of every possible 
shade, great, dewy roses, feathery acacia-sprays, azaleas, 
brilliant-hued anemones, and deep, sweet violets — 
all reflected in mirrors, gathered into baskets, arranged 
in bouquets and festoons, tied with broad ribbons — a 
perfect ballroom for a millionaire fairy. Other great 
plate-glass windows will show just as delicate and 
brilliant hues, but the flowers here are artificial, and are 
amongst silks and satins, hats and gloves and laces. 
These windows win a good deal of attention — pretty 
frocks and hats both outside and inside. There are a 
great many jewellers' shops, brilliant and flashing and 
costly. The book-shops of Edinburgh are so historic 
and famous that they ought to have a chapter to them- 
selves. Are they not the lineal descendants of that 
book-shop of the seventeenth century, the shop of 
Andro Hart, bookseller and publisher, just opposite 
the Cross, the favourite lounge of the poet Drummond 
of Hawthornden ? And of Allan Ramsay's book-shop, 
also beside the Cross, where all the eighteenth-century 
literati gathered? Edinburgh is a city of books — 
authors, paper-makers, printers, binders, publishers, and 
booksellers. But we must not forget, in " the land o' 
cakes," our confectioners' shops. They are quite 
superior to ordinary ones. Not only are Scottish cakes 
works of art, but there are in Scotland our famous 
scones, our " bawbee baps," our shortbread, Pitcaithlie 
bannocks, and mutton-pies. And each Princes Street 
baker has upstairs a dainty tea and luncheon room, 
some with a balcony full of little tables, — a gay sight in 



" Grey Metropolis of the North ' 17 

summer under its striped awning, and the cause of 
much envious interest from the inhabitants of the tops 
of tramway cars or high coaches, who are on the line 
of sight. Our much-abused climate cannot be very 
bad if it allows eating and drinking, foreign fashion, 
out of doors from Spring to Autumn, — though some- 
times the wind does spill the tea ! 

Amongst the shops are every now and then great 
buildings — hotels and banks and clubs, and the 
windows of the clubs are full of those who idly watch 
the crowds outside. 

The road side of the pavement has its attractions, 
too. Here are flowers also — humbler flowers, being 
sold in baskets — flowers in their seasons, daffodils and 
violets in Spring, roses in Summer. And there, stand- 
ing patiently and smilingly on the edge of the causeway, 
is something Tennyson never saw — a " Suffragette " 
selling her papers, with her colours, purple white and 
green, displayed in ribbon and on her embroidered bag, 
and a bunch of papers in her outstretched hand. What 
would the author of " The Princess " have thought of 
this? Would he have stopped and bought a copy of 
Votes for Women ? 

And now we must cross the street, piloting our way 
through among cars and cabs and cable-tramways and 
carts and " taxis," and look at the statues. They stand 
just within the gardens, behind the railings ; but they 
face towards Princes Street. There are some half- 
dozen, and they are all statues of, or memorials to, 
those who have in their day been Edinburgh citizens. 

At the extreme west of Princes Street is the Church 
of St. John the Evangelist, built on the model of 
St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It is opposite the busy 

ed. 3 



1 8 Edinburgh 

Caledonian Station and its hotel, and the crowded 
thoroughfare of Lothian Street lies between ; but facing 
Princes Street there stands, beside St. John's Church, 
the beautiful Cross erected in memory of Dean Ramsay, 
the author of " Scottish Life and Character," who was 
attached to St. John's all the last part of his life. Then 
there are statues of Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer 
of chloroform; of "Christopher North"; of Allan 
Ramsay, the author of the "Gentle Shepherd"; of 
Adam Black, Edinburgh's Member and Lord Provost ; 
of Livingstone, the explorer — this last doubly interest- 
ing, as the sculptor, Mrs. D. O. Hill, was also a citizen 
of Edinburgh. 

The newest statue in Princes Street is very instructive. 
It is of a trooper on horseback. Who is he ? Why, 
he is the last of our Scots Greys. He is the only one 
left to us of our famous regiment, so long quartered in 
Edinburgh, and the pride of Scotland. Who has not 
heard of the Scots Greys at Waterloo? It was at 
Waterloo that Sergeant-Major Ewart took the eagle 
from three Frenchmen. It was the conduct of the 
Greys at Waterloo that won for the regiment the right 
to bear its emblem, an eagle, and the word " Waterloo." 
But the story that sets every true Scot's blood tingling 
is the story of how, late in the day, the Scots Greys 
charged to the cry " Scotland for Ever !" 

Many people have seen Lady Butler's picture of that 
famous charge. It is told that, long ago, when the 
picture was sent up to the London Academy, the 
hanging committee all bared their heads when they 
saw it. It was the picture of the year, and it had to 
have a rail put round it to keep off the crowd that was 
always pressing in front of it. But the artists would 



" Grey Metropolis of the North "19 

not make Lady Butler an Academician for all that, for, 
though she painted the finest work of the year, and 
though she could rouse patriotism by her work, was 
she not a woman ? 

Here, in Princes Street, stands the memorial to those 
of the Scots Greys who fell in South Africa. It was 
unveiled on a cold, wet November day in 1906 by Lord 
Rosebery, who made one of his almost inspired speeches 
— a speech whose impression will not easily be forgotten 
by those who heard. " Flesh of our flesh," he said, 
" bone of our bone. . . . Scotland for Ever !" 

The Scots Greys have left us. There stands the silent 
mounted trooper in Princes Street — " Lest we forget." 

Farther on is the great Gothic monument that en- 
closes the statue of Sir Walter Scott. You can go inside 
this one, and pay twopence, and climb up the narrow 
circular stair, up and up and up in the dark, every now 
and then with a shaft of light and a breath of air from 
a loop-hole, and again, every now and then, coming 
suddenly out into wind and sunshine and finding your- 
self in a little gallery, whence you can look down at the 
town below, that grows smaller and smaller as you 
mount. And the steps of the spiral stair grow smaller 
and smaller, too, as you mount, till at the very top it 
is difficult to find foothold on them, especially as the 
last ones are worn hollow. 

From the very top of the Scott Monument, if it is a 
clear day, you have a wonderful view. The cabs and 
cars in Princes Street below look like tiny crawling flies, 
and all the town is spread away in every direction — 
streets and spires and chimneys and domes and steeples; 
but your eye passes quickly over that to the Firth of 
Forth, with its busy shores — Leith and its docks and its 



20 Edinburgh 

fort ; Granton with her harbours and shipping ; Trinity 
and Joppa and Portobello and their piers ; and then the 
stretch of sea — the dotted vessels, the islands — Inch- 
keith and its lighthouse, and Inchcolm and its monastery ; 
and beyond them the shores of Fife, woods, fields and 
farms on the Fife hillsides, and high above them the 
Fife Lomands, and the dream of the snowy peaks of the 
Highland hills. And look to the west — there, beyond 
Dalmeny, is that monster of engineering, — the Forth 
Bridge, — the highest bridge in the world, spanning the 
Firth of Forth with its three mighty arches, where the two 
shores are at their nearest, — a mile from shore to shore. 

You will consider it has been worth twopence and 
the climb ; but you will feel a little dizzy when you 
have descended to the world again, step by step, round 
and round in the darkness, and find yourself once more 
in the sunshine of the busy street. And you will look 
up at Sir Walter's statue under the arches of the monu- 
ment, at his kindly, rugged head, at his great dog beside 
him, and at the grass terraces round the monument 
filled afresh every year with planted wreaths of flowers. 

And now you are approaching the East end of Princes 
Street, close to the other big railway-station, called "The 
Waverley," after Scott's first novel. There is a large 
new hotel there, too, and farther on is the General Post- 
Office, and . . . Suddenly, with a terrific noise, a cannon 
is fired off close at hand. The horses that are "gun- 
shy " start and rear, and you, if you are a stranger to 
Edinburgh, jump as if you had been shot ; but if you 
belong to Edinburgh you merely pull out your watch, 
and if the hands point to one o'clock you shut it and 
walk on, looking satisfied. For this is " The Gun " — 
" the One o'clock Gun," fired from the Castle every day 



" Grey Metropolis of the North ' 21 

when the time-ball signal attached to the flagstaff of 
Nelson's Monument on Calton Hill falls, showing that 
it is one o'clock by Greenwich time. When The Gun 
goes off in Edinburgh, for one moment everyone is hold- 
ing a watch and looking at it. It happened once that in 
London, quite late in the afternoon, a gun was fired — 
it was the first of a royal salute — and two people walk- 
ing towards one another in Piccadilly each pulled out a 
watch. And then, looking up, they met each other's 
eyes, and laughed in friendly understanding. Each 
knew the other must be from Edinburgh. 

But what a change has come over Princes Street ! 
All the babies and perambulators are hurrying home to 
nursery dinners ; all the ladies and their dogs are going 
too ; all the clerks, men and women, are hurrying out 
of their offices, and there are swarms of girls and boys, 
women and men, from the printing-works and other 
places of industry, pouring out for their dinner-hours. 
There is now a good deal of jostling and good-humour. 
And, presently, out come the lawyers too, and the 
bankers and stockbrokers and business men, all intent 
on luncheon. Some turn into their clubs, some into 
restaurants, or into the dainty tea-rooms with their 
balconies. And while they are at luncheon the sun 
clouds over, and big drops of rain stain the dark stone 
pavement a darker grey. Umbrellas are put up ; the 
last belated perambulator has its hood drawn over its 
occupant, and the nurse bends her head and runs ; the 
shop doorways fill up, and so do the club windows ; 
the broad pavement, lately so crowded, is rapidly 
emptied, and so are the cab-stands opposite. Sky, 
Castle, mist, views, vistas, houses, pavement, — all are 
no longer a picture, they are shades of a photography 



22 Edinburgh 

and we are again in the " gloom that saddens heaven 
and earth," in "the Grey Metropolis of the North." 

And so the day wears on to a close, till in the even- 
ing it " fairs," and the air is sweet and fresh. And 
presently the stars appear above the chimneys, and then 
the bugles sound from the Castle, calling the wanderers 
home. 

CHAPTER IV 

STORIES OF THE PAST : TWO MIRACLES 

About eight hundred years ago, two young Saxon 
princesses, and their brother and their mother, were 
shipwrecked in the Firth of Forth, and were landed at 
Queensferry. The young princesses were the grand- 
nieces of Edward the Confessor, and their brother was 
Edgar the Atheling, heir to the English crown, and 
they had all fled from England because it had been 
invaded and taken by William the Conqueror. 

The king of Scotland in those days was Malcolm III., 
and when he was a prince he had been obliged to fly from 
Scotland, — not because Scotland had been conquered by 
a foreign foe, for that has never yet happened to Scotland, 
though it may some day, — but because his father, King 
Duncan, had been murdered by Macbeth, as Shake- 
speare's play makes all the world aware. So Malcolm 
had fled to the court of Edward the Confessor, and had 
there been very kindly received and kept for fifteen 
years, till Macbeth died ; and then he had come back 
to reign in Scotland. So now of course the nieces and 
nephew of Edward the Confessor thought Malcolm 
would be grateful and kind to them in his turn. And 
so he was ; and, though he was much older than they 
were, and had been married before, he fell in love with 



Two Miracles 22 

one of the princesses, whose name was Margaret, and 
made her his queen. Malcolm, called " Canmore," 
which means " big head," was a great soldier, and loved 
fighting, and he fought many battles ; but he did not 
know how to read or write. It is said that Queen 
Margaret, who was more learned, taught the king to 
read, and it is also told that he loved her so much that 
he used to kiss her books that he could not read him- 
self. She also taught him to like all sorts of beauty 
and splendour, such as should surround a king ; and 
the court of Scotland became a fine and stately court, 
instead of rather a rough and simple one, such as had 
contented the soldier king and his first queen ; and 
Malcolm and Margaret were waited on by persons of 
high rank in the kingdom, and served on gold and 
silver dishes, and wore beautiful clothes and jewels, and 
encouraged the making of rare and costly things. 

Queen Margaret was very pious, and she and the King 
used to wash the feet of the poor, and with their own 
hands feed beggars and orphans. Malcolm Canmore 
and Queen Margaret lived a great deal at Edinburgh 
Castle, though Edinburgh was not then the Capital of 
Scotland, but was only a fortress built on a high rock 
among woods. Edinburgh Castle itself is utterly 
different to-day from what it was in those days, — there is 
only a tiny bit left of Malcolm's and Margaret's Castle, 
and that is Queen Margaret's little chapel, and it is the 
very oldest bit of all Edinburgh to-day. 

When the King and Queen were tired of living at the 
Castle, they used to ferry across the Firth of Forth, at 
the place where the shore of Fife is only a mile off, — 
where the Forth Bridge now stands, — and go to Dun- 
fermline. Here they had a palace, and here they had 



24 Edinburgh 

been married, and here the Queen had founded a mag- 
nificent Abbey. The two villages on the opposite sides 
of the Firth of Forth are still called North Queensferry 
and South Queensferry. 

But Malcolm Canmore was a fighter, and did not 
always stay at home. Though he loved the Queen so 
much that he kissed her books, her indirect influence did 
not always prevail if it thwarted his own wishes. One 
day, after he and the Queen had been married over 
twenty years, he went with two of his sons to fight in 
Northumberland, though the Queen was very ill indeed 
and begged him to stay. He left her and the younger 
children in Edinburgh Castle. And hither, four days 
later, the second son rode back alone, and told his mother 
that her husband, the King, and their eldest son were 
both slain. The news killed the Queen. She died in 
her little chapel, praying. 

And when the little group of orphans and the old 
priest in charge of them looked down over the Castle 
walls, they found they were surrounded by enemies. A 
wild, rough uncle, Donald Bane, who, when Malcolm 
had fled for refuge to the civilized Saxon court, had fled 
to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, where 
life was still very savage, had now come, with a wild 
horde of followers, to take his nephews prisoners or slay 
them, and make himself King of Scotland. There they 
were, — men dressed in deer-skins, surrounding the Castle 
Rock, howling and whooping and intent on battle. And 
whilst the unhappy princes and princesses looked down, 
and thought themselves doomed, — gradually it all faded 
from sight. Wave after wave of soft white mist blew up 
from the Firth of Forth, hung over all the land, blotted 
the trees and hills and morasses from sight, crawled up 



Two Miracles 25 

the sides of the Castle Rock, and shrouded everything in 
a dense vapour. What did the orphans and the old 
priest do ? They gave God thanks for a miracle, and 
took dead Queen Margaret in her coffin, and escaped out 
of a little postern gate, and crept and scrambled down the 
steep rocky sides of the hill, — a perilous descent, — and 
across the land, through woods and over morasses, bear- 
ing their mother's coffin with them, and at last reached 
the ferry over the Forth, and crossed it to Dunfermline, 
to the Abbey their mother had built, and were safe. 

Donald Bane did reign for a short time as king of Scot- 
land, but so did the gallant young princes who carried 
their mother's coffin all that way that misty day eight 
hundred years ago. Four of them were kings of Scot- 
land, one after another, and one of their sisters, Maude, 
married Henry I., and so became Queen of England. 

The next story of a miracle in Edinburgh is the story 
of one of these sons of Malcolm and Margaret, — David, 
the last of them to reign, and one of the best kings 
Scotland has had. 

It is the story of how Holyrood Abbey was founded. 

King David was hunting in the big forest of Drums- 
heugh, and he had been advised that he ought not to 
hunt that day, because it was a day his Church keeps 
holy, — the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, — and 
not a day to spend on sport or pleasure. But the King, 
though he was very pious, would not listen. Perhaps it 
was a fine day, and the temptation was great. Anyhow, 
he went, riding among his courtiers, with jest and laugh, 
with bugles slung and horses champing, joyous and self- 
willed, taking his kingly pleasure. And somehow, as 
the day wore on, he became separated from the others, 

ed. 4 



26 Edinburgh 

and found himself riding alone in the great forest at the 
edge of Arthur's Seat, and could no longer hear the 
bugles and the cries of the chase. And suddenly there 
crashed through the trees a huge angry white stag, and 
it turned at bay and attacked the King, who had only his 
short hunting sword with which to defend himself. And 
then the miracle. No white woolly mist from the Forth, 
but a hand from the clouds, that placed a Cross in King 
David's hand, and the King held up the sacred emblem 
in front of the stag, and the stag retreated before it into 
the forest, and the King was saved. 

King David had always been very generous to the 
Church. To build and endow Churches and Abbeys was 
the one way then of protecting the ownership of land 
and property, and educating the people. King David, 
indeed, was called " a sair sanct for the crown." But the 
night after King David had disobeyed his Confessor and 
hunted on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, 
St. Andrew, Scotland's Patron Saint, came to him in a 
dream, and told him to found yet another Abbey on the 
scene of the miracle. And so he built a splendid Abbey 
at the foot of Arthur's Seat, — the Abbey of the Holy 
Rood; and the miraculous Cross that had saved the King 
was placed above the High Altar, and remained there for 
many years, till it was carried off by English invaders 
and placed in Durham Cathedral. 

So now there was a rich and powerful Abbey down in 
the valley a mile below the Castle ; and the Augustine 
Canons began to build the Canongate round about their 
Abbey, and naturally there was much coming and going 
between the Castle and the Abbey and the Canongate, 
and a street, — a steep, mediaeval street, — gradually grew 
all down the ridge of Castle Hill from one to the other. 
And so began the town of Edinburgh. 



Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 27 
CHAPTER V 

STORIES OF THE PAST: BATTLES, MURDERS, AND 
SUDDEN DEATHS 

There have been so many battles, murders, and sudden 
deaths in Edinburgh that it is impossible to tell of half 
of even the most famous and romantic. Let us take 
four stories out of two hundred and ten years of Edin- 
burgh history, and let us begin with a story of sudden 
death, — the story of " the Black Dinner" in the Castle, 
in the year 1440, when James II. was a little boy often 
years old, four years after he had come to the throne. 
There was a great family in Scotland that was second in 
wealth and power only to the royal family of Stewart, — 
the family of the Douglases. When James I., the good 
and great poet-king of Scotland, was murdered at Perth, 
and his little six-year-old son was crowned James II., 
the head of the great house of Douglas was the old 
Earl of Douglas ; but he died and was succeeded by 
his son, a youth of seventeen. This boy-earl was very 
brave and proud and haughty, and he kept great state, 
and surrounded himself with royal splendour, riding 
about with a regiment of two thousand lances, and 
sending ambassadors to the court of France, as though 
he had been a king instead of a subject. The little 
King — too young to see any wrong to himself in all this 
— admired and looked up to the young earl, as a boy 
of ten would admire the bold ways of another boy, seven 
years older than himself. But the statesmen who had 
charge of the King were more experienced and saw 
danger ahead. 

In those days sudden death was the only method that 
occurred to men when other people annoyed them. The 



28 Edinburgh 

young Earl of Douglas and his fifteen-year-old brother 
were invited to Edinburgh Castle by the King's 
guardians, Sir Alexander Livingstone and Sir William 
Crichton ; and the little King and they, and the two 
young Douglases and their old adviser, Sir Malcolm 
Fleming of Cumbernauld, all made merry and feasted 
together ; but the Earl's retinue were not allowed within 
the Castle walls. Suddenly there was placed on the 
table a dish containing the head of a great black bull. 
This was the old Scottish symbol that someone present 
was doomed to death. The warlike Douglases under- 
stood it. Instantly all was clamour. The two brave 
boy-nobles sprang to their feet and drew their swords : 
the little King begged and prayed for the lives of his 
friends. But the banqueting-hall was filled with armed 
men — armed men, against two striplings and an old man, 
— guests ! They would not have called it murder — 
there was a form of trial for treason — but the prisoners 
had been doomed to death before the trial, for the black 
bull's head had meant that. They were executed on 
the Castle Hill. 

" Edinburgh Castle, towne and toure, 
God grant thou sink for sin ! 
And that even for the black dinour 
Earl Douglas gat therein." 

That was not the last sudden death in King James II. 's 
reign. His own death was sudden, as was the death of 
most of the brave kings of Scotland ; but it did not 
occur in Edinburgh. Let the next story of the past be 
a story that redounds to the credit of the town, though 
it is the saddest story in all Scottish history, — the story 
of Flodden. 

It was a moonlit night in August, 1 5 1 3. On the 
Borough Muir, — part of the old royal hunting forest of 



Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 29 

Drumsheugh, where King David had encountered the 
stag, — was encamped the host of the Scottish army, old 
men and young men, Lowlanders, Highlanders, and 
Islanders. A thousand tents gleamed in the moonlight, 
and the cries of the sentries broke through the hushed 
sounds of the night. Within the little city few were 
sleeping, and many a brave woman's heart was anxious, 
for on the morrow their gallant and beloved King, 
James IV., was to march to war with the English, and 
not a home in Edinburgh but was giving a husband or 
a son to follow him and strike for King and Country. 

In the centre of the High Street, beside the Col- 
legiate Church of St. Giles, stood the City Cross, rising 
from its little battlemented tower, whence all royal 
proclamations were made to the citizens. The moon- 
light fell on the High Street and on the Cross. King 
James was at the Abbey of Holyrood. It was midnight, 
and many honest folk were in their beds, but others 
were wakeful. 

Who are these heralds and pursuivants who mount 
to the foot of the Cross in the moonshine ? Are they 
living men, or are they a spectral throng ? The night 
is wakened with trumpets, and scared faces appear at 
the windows of the tall houses of the High Street. A 
voice proclaims from the Cross a ghastly summons, 
reading by name a long roll of Scotland's chivalry — 
earls and barons, knights and gentlemen and honest 
burghers, — desiring them to appear within forty days 
before the Court of Pluto. Amongst those who heard 
this dread summons was a certain " Maister Richart 
Lawsone," who, when he heard his own name read 
out, called to his servant to bring him his purse, and 
took out a crown and cast it over the stair on which 



30 Edinburgh 

he stood into the street, crying, a I appeal from that 
summons' judgement and sentence thereof, and take me 
all hail in the mercy of God and Christ Jesus His Son." 

Next day, Scotland's Standard, the "ruddy lion 
ramped on gold," waved in August sunshine on the 
Borough Muir, and the tents were struck, and all was 
eager preparation and enthusiasm ; and then the King 
and his army moved south, and Edinburgh was left 
deserted — women and old men and children, waiting. 

It was about three weeks after the army had marched 
away that one messenger rode back into the town, — the 
first escaped from the battle, — and told the news. The 
King was dead, the battle lost, and dead beside the 
King were all the flower of Scotland who had marched 
so gaily forth. The story runs that not one from all 
that ghostly death-roll had escaped save only that 
" Maister Richart Lawsone " who had appealed from 
the summons. Thirteen earls, fourteen lords, an 
archbishop, a bishop, two abbots, all had fallen. Not 
a noble house in Scotland but had lost a member ; not 
a Scottish home but mourned its dead. The whole of 
Scotland was staggered by the blow. 

And Edinburgh ? Brave little sixteenth-century 
Edinburgh ! 

What should we hear now? That the stocks had 
fallen. What did they hear then ? Another Pro- 
clamation from the City Cross, — not a spectral throng 
then. " All manner of persons " were ordered to have 
ready their goods and weapons of war for defence of 
the town lest the English marched upon it ; and the 
women were not to weep in the streets, but to go into 
the Church and pray for their Country. 

The next battle was not an international one : it was 



Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 3 1 

civil war. Edinburgh was famed for its street-fights 
in the Middle Ages. Every Edinburgh burgher was 
bound to keep a spear, and to be ready to rush out 
with it when the beacon fires flashed from hill to hill, 
telling Scotland that the English were over the Border 
again. That was the way they telegraphed in those 
days, — and it was almost as quick a way of sending the 
news. A bonfire blazed up on Berwick Law, — in a 
moment, the fire laid ready on the top of Arthur's 
Seat was kindled and began to crackle ; and so on, 
right up to the Highlands. And when the bonfires 
blazed, out came the lusty citizens with their spears ; 
for in the Middle Ages in Scotland there was no paid 
army as there is now, and so it was every citizen's duty 
to be able to bear arms in defence of the Country. 

But Edinburgh folk were quick tempered, and the 
spears were handy, and were not always used legiti- 
mately on English heads. Many a fight has raged in 
the High Street of Edinburgh, and up and down the 
narrow closes. 

The most celebrated is the one that took place in 
the reign of James V., and it is called " Cleanse the 
Causeway," and was a political fight between the two 
great houses of Douglas and Hamilton. The Earl of 
Angus was head of the house of Douglas, and the 
Earl of Arran was head of the house of Hamilton, and 
Bishop Gavin Douglas, the famous poet, nephew of 
the Earl of Angus, tried to make peace between them, 
by appealing to the great Archbishop Beaton, who was 
with the Hamiltons. But the Archbishop vowed that 
on his conscience he knew nothing at all about it, and 
he struck himself on the chest as he said so, and there was 
a noise of metal, showing that the Archbishop was wear- 



32 Edinburgh 

ing armour under his rochet. So Gavin Douglas told him 
his conscience " clattered," which means it told tales. 

Then the fight began. Such a fight ! The Hamiltons 
streamed up the narrow wynds from the Archbishop's 
palace in the Cowgate, and found the Douglases waiting 
for them, packed in a mass in the High Street, and 
there were clashings of arms and cries and blows, and all 
the windows were filled with spectators, and spears 
were handed down to the fighters. At the end of the 
fight all the causeways and closes were filled with dead 
and dying. The Douglases had won the day, and the 
Earl of Arran escaped by swimming across the Nor' 
Loch on a collier's horse ; and the Archbishop, whose 
conscience had told tales, hid behind an Altar in a 
Church, and was dragged out, and was saved by the 
would-be peacemaker, Bishop Gavin Douglas ! 

The story of the next reign is the story of a murder 
at Holyrood. When sightseers visit Holyrood they 
are shown a little room with part of the threadbare 
tapestry still hanging on the wall, and a secret stair 
behind it. This was Queen Mary's boudoir, off her 
room, and the stair led down to the room of her bad 
boy-husband, Lord Darnley. 

In this little ante-room Queen Mary sat at supper 
with the Countess of Argyle and the lay Abbot of 
Holyrood and others of her household, including the 
Queen's Italian secretary, her musician and favourite, 
Riccio. The visitor to-day wonders how so many 
could have gathered in this tiny room ; but there were 
still others to come into it. The first to come was 
Darnley, who entered and sat down by the Queen ; 
and at that signal in rushed Lord Ruthven and a band 
of others, — armed assassins, — and seized Riccio. There 




THE MESSENGER FROM FLODDEN. 



Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 33 

was a struggle, the Queen trying to protect Riccio, 
and Riccio clinging to her skirt and praying her to 
save him. The supper-table was overturned, and they 
pointed a pistol at their Queen, and stabbed the man in 
her sight, and then dragged him across the Presence 
Chamber, and completed their murder with " whingers 
and swords " — fifty-six wounds — one unarmed man 
against an armed band. Nowadays, a candle is held 
down to a dark stain in the wooden boards in the 
shadowy doorway to let the stranger see the brass plate 
and the bloodstains of Riccio, — once real, perhaps now 
not so real. 

All night the young Queen, the outraged daughter 
of a line of kings, was a prisoner in the hands of this 
husband and his brutal friends ; and one of them told 
her that if she attempted to speak he would " cut her 
into collops and cast her over the wall." Little wonder 
that a few months later, before the birth of her child, 
she sought the safety of the Castle. 

Darnley was not arraigned for treason ; but a year 
later he was visited with smallpox, and lay in a house 
just outside the city. The Queen visited her sick 
husband there ; and one Sunday evening she went 
thence on foot under a silken canopy, with lighted torches 
and a guard of Archers, to Holyrood. Here baby James 
lay peacefully in his cradle, unaware of his royal destinies, 
and here a masque was going on in honour of the 
marriage of one of the Queen's servants. And in the 
small hours of that morning the house where Darnley 
lay was blown up with gunpowder, and Darnley was 
blown up with it. 

A shifting of the scenes, and it is eighty-three years 
later in Edinburgh. Much has happened. Sixty-three 
ed. 5 



34 Edinburgh 

years have passed since Mary, Queen of Scots, ended 
her sorrows on the scaffold. Her son, born in Edin- 
burgh Castle, had reigned for fifty-eight years over 
Scotland, and for the last twenty-two of them had been 
king of both England and Scotland. His son, Charles I., 
had been beheaded ; and his son — the great-grandson of 
Mary, Queen of Scots, — was in exile, while Cromwell 
ruled as Protector. 

The Marquis of Montrose had been faithful to 
Charles I., and had fought many battles for him against 
the disloyal Covenanters in Scotland. Six days after 
Charles I. was beheaded the Scots had Charles II. pro- 
claimed King at the Cross of Edinburgh. But they 
then sent to tell him that he could not be King unless 
he gave up his creed and became a Covenanter. Rather 
than do this, Prince Charles, then eighteen years old, 
sent Montrose to Scotland to try and win his ancient 
kingdom for him. But Montrose was defeated, taken 
prisoner, and sent to Edinburgh and condemned to 
death. How the Covenanters hated him ! On the 
day of his death they had him dragged, tightly bound, 
on a high hurdle drawn by a single horse, all through 
the streets of Edinburgh, that the rabble might enjoy 
the spectacle. On the hurdle sat the black-garbed 
executioner, and in front of it were marched a band of 
other Cavalier prisoners, bound and bareheaded. The 
cavalcade was preceded by the City magistrates in their 
robes of office ; and all round the people pressed, a 
mass of pitiless humanity, yelling and throwing mud 
and stones, jibes and curses. The forestairs, balconies, and 
the windows of the lofty houses were filled with specta- 
tors. Were they all pitiless ? No ; some shed tears. 

And so the hurdle rattled on, slowly. It took three 
hours to drive through the town. 



Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 35 

Close down to Holyrood, the procession paused in 
front of Moray House ; for on that day the great 
Marquis of Argyle, the most powerful Covenanting lord 
in Scotland, and Montrose's rival and arch-enemy, was a 
guest at Moray House, attending the marriage festivities 
of his son and the Earl of Moray's daughter. The 
wedding-party, including many of the Covenanting lords, 
came out on to the stone balcony to gloat over their 
enemy as he passed to his death. In their bravery of 
silks and laces and jewels they leant over and looked at 
the moving mass of yelling rabble, and at the pale, proud, 
calm face of Montrose. He must have been close to 
them in that narrow street on his high hurdle, — bare- 
headed, wounded, bound, and utterly fearless. For one 
moment the eyes of the two men met, and Argyle 
turned away. 

Montrose was hanged on May 21, 1650, at the Cross 
of Edinburgh, on a gibbet thirty feet high, and his head 
was spiked on the Tolbooth, out in the middle of the 
High Street by St. Giles's Church. It remained there 
for eleven years, and then it was taken down and 
reverently buried with his mutilated body, buried in all 
pomp and respect by Bishop Wishart, who had been his 
Chaplain, and was now made Bishop of Edinburgh. It 
was on the same day that Montrose was buried that the 
Marquis of Argyle, a martyr in his turn, was executed 
at the Cross. 

Many are the battles, murders, and sudden deaths 
that have helped to make the story of Edinburgh. But 
in remembering them we ought to remember that the 
cruelties were never all on one side, either in Religion or 
Politics. The Covenanters treated their enemies most 
barbarously, and in their turn were treated by their 
enemies most barbarously. It is all because it is men's 



36 Edinburgh 

nature to be cruel and tyrannical to those who defy them, 
and then are helpless and in their power. Nor need we 
judge the people of the past, lest we be judged ; for, 
with all our added three centuries of civilization, are we 
in this respect very much better to-day? 



CHAPTER VI 

EDINBURGH GIRLS AND BOYS IN OLD DAYS 

Almost the first thing we know about Edinburgh, — 
out of the shadowy, legendary past, before it was even 
a town, — is something about little girls ; for it is thought 
that the reason why Edinburgh Castle used long ago 
to be called the " Castell of Maydens," was because 
very young Pictish princesses were kept there for safety. 

Such cold little Pictish " Maydens " they must have 
been, spending long days looking down over the ram- 
parts and rocks on to woods and mists and far-off sea 
and hills, and wondering, in their cramped little minds, 
what the world was like, and what it held for them ! 
But this was very long ago indeed. 

Scottish children could not always have been very 
happy in the Middle Ages, for there was so much 
fighting between England and Scotland that people 
lived in a continual state of readiness for their enemies ; 
and in the towns there could have been very little room 
for children, — no freedom nor running about ; no 
country walks on fine days, for outside the town there 
were wolves prowling ; and on wet days no large airy 
nurseries or schoolrooms, even for the children of rich 
parents, and no books and no grand toys. 

The boys were better off than the girls, for what 
education there was was given to them. Of the girls 



Girls and Boys in Old Days 37 

we hear nothing ; but we have a glimpse of the boys of 
the fifteenth century. In James I.'s reign, a boy of 
sixteen was counted a man, and had to possess weapons 
according to his rank, to be ready to defend his Country. 
And four times a year he had to attend, with all the 
men of the land, meetings called " Wapinschaws " — 
(shows of weapons) — and be fined if he did not possess 
the right ones. It was thought in those days much 
more necessary that boys should be trained to be of use 
to the Country than that they should enjoy themselves, 
and so boys were forbidden by law to play at football, 
which did not train them to fight, and any boy found 
playing football was fined fourpence. But they were 
ordered by law to practise archery from the time they were 
twelve years old, for that was learning to fight. Close to 
the Church in every Parish there was a shooting-ground, 
and on each public holiday, — that is to say, about once a 
week, — every boy had to shoot three arrows at a mark. 

This is why to this day we see yew-trees in Church- 
yards. They were planted there in the days of bows and 
arrows, for it was from these trees that the bows were cut. 

But the sons of gentlemen in Scotland were from very 
early days taught Latin as well as fighting. All the 
Scottish kings were fond of learning, and encouraged it. 
In the reign of James IV., — himself a highly educated 
man, speaking several languages, and interested in all 
arts and crafts as well as being excellent in all manly 
sports and a brave knight, — the boys of Scotland 
who were the sons of men of rank were well looked 
after. Their fathers were ordered by law to send them 
to school when they were eight or nine till they were 
good Latin scholars, and then they were to go on to one 
of the Scottish Universities. 



3 8 Edinburgh 

But all the Latin in the world could not tame the 
unruly little boys of Edinburgh. Fighting was their 
one instinct. They used to have great street-fights like 
their elders. But whereas the street-fights between rival 
noble houses and their followers were called " tulzies," 
and were fights to the death, the street-fights between 
rival bands of boys were called "bickers," and were 
conducted with fists and stones and mud. So long ago 
as 1529, when James V. was king, the Town Council 
of Edinburgh passed an act ordering that there should 
be no more " Bickerings between Bairns," and that if any 
should be found bickering their "faderis and moderis " 
(fathers and mothers) were to answer for it. But how 
could the bairns be expected not to bicker if their 
respected faderis set them such bad examples? It was 
only nine years before that the great " tulzie " of 
" Cleanse the Causeway " had raged up and down the 
town. Had not every Edinburgh boy of course heard of 
it ? Had he not often, on dark winter evenings by fire- 
light, sat and listened open-mouthed to the story of that 
day ? Was it not his proudest ambition to do likewise ? 

All through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
the boys of Edinburgh must have witnessed many 
"tulzies" in the High Street, between great rival 
families, — between the Scotts and the Kerrs, between the 
Hoppringles and the Elliots. How could the Town 
Council hope to make the boys bicker no more ? 

The High School was the chief School in Edinburgh, 
to which all the important citizens sent their sons. It 
was the descendant of the Town Grammar School in 
which the boys of James IV. 's time had been drilled in 
Latin, and so was governed by the Town Council. At 
the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Edinburgh 



Girls and Boys in Old Days 39 

was still the home of royalty, and the Royal Standard 
waved at Holyrood, showing that James VI. was in 
residence there, the King took a keen interest in the 
chief school of his Capital, and it was in these days that 
it was christened " The Royal High School." The first 
Earl of Haddington, Secretary of State for Scotland, 
himself an old High School boy, also took great interest 
in the school, and he showed this interest in a way that 
must have won the hearts of all the scholars. 

One summer evening the Earl of Haddington was in 
his own splendid house in the Cowgate, sitting resting 
in his dressing-gown and cap and slippers, chatting and 
drinking wine with a friend. There was a noise in the 
street outside, and they looked out to find that a u bicker" 
was in progress between the High School boys and the 
students of the newly-founded University, — then merely 
boys too, — and the students were winning the day. Up 
rose the Earl of Haddington, President of the Court 
of Session and Secretary of State for Scotland, in his 
dressing-gown and slippers. Out he rushed and took 
command of his old school, cheered them on, drove the 
students through the Grassmarket and out of one of the 
City gates, the West Port. No doubt using his high 
authority, he locked the City gate, so that the students 
had to spend the night outside ; and then he went back 
to his friend and his wine. 

It was later on in James VI. 's reign that the boys of 
the High School felt themselves wronged by the refusal 
to them of a week's holiday, so they got into the school 
by night, taking swords and firearms with them, and in 
the morning it was found that the school was in a state 
of siege. The Town Council sent a force of city officers 
to quell the young garrison. The boys refused to 



4-0 Edinburgh 

surrender, and threatened death to any who approached 
them. Bailie Macmorran, a merchant of great wealth and 
importance in the town, ordered the door to be forced 
open with a battering ram, and while this was being done, 
one of the boys fired at him, and killed him on the spot. 

The wealthy Macmorran family demanded " blood for 
blood"; but the father of the frenzied boy was a man 
of rank and note, and great influence was used to have 
the boy set free. When one remembers the spirit of 
vengeance of the time, one is thankful to know that he 
was saved from the clutches of the law. The house of 
Bailie Macmorran, in Riddle's Close, where he enter- 
tained King James and his Danish bride, still stands. 

Of the girls' schools in Edinburgh at the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, we hear occasionally. In 
Chambers's " Traditions of Edinburgh " it is told that in 
1703, — that was only eight years after Bailie Macmorran 
was shot by the High School boy, — the mistress of a 
boarding-school kept in an Edinburgh "close" advertised 
that she taught " young ladies and gentlewomen all sorts 
of breeding that is to be had in any part of Britain, and 
great care taken of their conversation." Later on in the 
century there was a very noted school for girls in Edin- 
burgh, at which Sir Walter Scott's mother was educated. 
It was kept by Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, a lady who was 
connected with many of the old families, and so was 
given charge of their daughters. Sir Walter Scott said 
of her that " she must have been possessed of uncommon 
talents for education, as all her young ladies in after life 
wrote and spelt admirably, were well acquainted with 
history and the belles lettres i without neglecting the 
more homely duties of the needle and the accompt book ; 
and perfectly well-bred in society." After leaving her 











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Girls and Boys in Old Days 4.1 

the " young ladies " were sent " to be finished off by 
the Honble. Mrs. Ogilvie,"and by her were trained, 
above all things, to sit upright and walk gracefully. 

A happier school this of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair's than 
the High School seems to have been. Lord Cockburn 
describes it when he went there in 1787, a trembling 
little man of eight years old, and his account is not very 
cheerful. " There were probably not ten days in which 
I was not flogged, at least once. . . . Two of the 
masters, in particular, were so savage, that any master 
doing now what they did every hour, would certainly be 
transported." The pupils had to be at school by seven 
in the morning in summer ; and all the teaching they 
received was still Latin, and Latin only, as it had been 
three centuries before. And yet this was the system 
that turned out such men as Sir Walter Scott, Lord 
Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Francis and Leonard Horner, 
Lord Cockburn ; and many others, notables of their time. 

And they contrived to be very happy in spite of the 
floggings, as boys will, learning very little Latin and less 
love for it in six hours indoors, and roaming over the 
hills and the open country by which Edinburgh was sur- 
rounded. And then there were always the "bickers"! 

The " bickers," in spite of the Town Council and the 
Town Guard, had survived the tulzies, and were still 
in full force in the eighteenth century. There were 
" bickers " between rival schools and between rival parts 
of the town, and between sons of gentlemen and the 
poorer boys of the town ; and when the New Town was 
beginning to be built, there were great "bickers" between 
the boys of the Old Town and the boys of the New 
Town. Sir Walter Scott, when he was a boy, used to 
take part in " bickers " between the boys of George 

ED. 6 



42 Edinburgh 

Square, where he lived, and the boys of Potterrow, a 
poor street near George Square. He tells how the leader 
of the Potterrow boys was a fine little fellow about 
thirteen years old, tall and active, blue eyed and fair 
haired, bare armed and bare footed. The George Square 
boys did not know his name, and he went by the name 
of " Greenbreeks." In one terrific conflict in " The 
Meadows," on the outskirts of Edinburgh, this young 
champion, leading a charge, was struck on the head by a 
" hanger " or knife, and fell, " his bright hair plentifully 
dabbled with blood." This was utterly against all the 
traditions and rules of " bickers." The Watchman, — the 
police of that day, — carried Greenbreeks off to the 
Infirmary, and the boys all fled, throwing the hanger 
into a ditch as they ran. But bare-footed Greenbreeks 
was a boy of metal : he declined to tell tales. So did 
he Watchman. When Greenbreeks recovered, a gii iger- 
bread baker, who supplied both the rich boys of George 
Square and the poor boys of Potterrow, was called 
upon to act as " go-between," and Greenbreeks was 
proffered a sum of pocket-money by the very penitent 
boy who had done the deed. He replied that " he 
would not sell his blood." After much urging he at last 
accepted a pound of snuff for an old grandmother or 
aunt with whom he lived. But the boys never met nor 
made friends, not from any ill-feeling, but because that 
would have stopped the " bickers" and the fun ! 

Long, long years after, that hanger was found, rusty 
and earth-clogged, in The Meadows. 

The last picture of Old Edinburgh is also, like the 
first, a picture of its little girls. No Pictish princesses 
in captivity, but two little hoydens in the reign of 
George III. 



Girls and Boys in Old Days 43 

All the wooden houses of the Old Town had " fore- 
stairs," — nights of outside steps leading from the pave- 
ment up over the booths of the street to the first storey 
of the house, where people lived. It had always from 
very early days been the habit for pigs to be kept under 
these " forestairs," and to have free liberty to run 
about in the streets. For the honour of Edinburgh 
be it said that this was the same in other towns, — in 
Paris, for example. And so it was part of the life of 
the High Street that the pigs should come grumphing 
out from under the " forestairs " and stroll at their 
piggie pleasure through the chief street of the town. 
No fear of motor car or cab ! — for there was no vehicle 
passed in those days down the crowded, jostling, dirty 
street, only foot passengers and sedan chairs and an 
occasional horseman, and then the laugh was on the 
pig's side, if he could run snorting between the horse's 
legs and throw the rider. Not only did pigs run about 
like dogs, but they were made into pets. There was 
one old judge in Edinburgh who, when he was a boy, 
had a pet pig that followed him wherever he went, and 
at night used to sleep at the foot of his bed. 

And the last story of Edinburgh little girls of old 
days is of the little daughters of Lady Maxwell of 
Monreith, who lived in Hyndford's Close. They used 
to spend happy mornings riding up and down the 
High Street on the last of the pigs that were allowed 
to run about free in the old way — one sister proudly 
mounted on a big sow, and the other sister running 
along by her and thumping the sow with a stick. One 
of these little women became afterwards Duchess of 
Gordon, and the other, Lady Wallace, was a society 
wit and a beauty. 



44 Edinburgh 

These, then, were the Edinburgh girls and boys of 
old days, — the girls and boys who lived in Edinburgh 
when it was a dear old picturesque town, high houses 
and narrow closes all down the hill from the Castle to 
the Canongate, a mile of densely-packed squalor and 
splendour, dirt and learning, gossip and wit, kindliness 
and brutality, cosiness and crime. It was in this 
crowded hive of a city that the girls and boys of Edin- 
burgh lived in old days. And they had not room to 
grow. If they were the children of people of quality, 
or of wealthy people, they lived in the closes off the 
High Street ; and if they were the children of merchants 
or tradesmen, they lived in the upper storeys of the tall 
houses in the High Street, above the booths and shops 
and cellars of the street. But they were all very over- 
crowded ; and as in those days it was not as it is now, 
when the best of everything is given to children, the 
grown-up people took, as a matter of course the best 
rooms of the house, and the children had to live and 
sleep wherever they could. 

Chambers's " Traditions " tells how in Edinburgh, 
just before the people could stand it no longer and the 
New Town was built, the town house of a country 
gentleman and lawyer, afterwards a judge, contained 
only three rooms and a kitchen ! There was the 
mother's parlour and the father's study, and the third 
room was a bedroom ; at night the children and the 
nurse had beds laid down for them in the study, the 
housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser, and the butler 
was turned out of doors. 

In a merchant's house in the High Street the kitchen 
and nursery were in cellars under the street, and the 
" children rotted off like sheep." It was time indeed 
that the New Town was built ! 



Girls and Boys in Old Days 45 
CHAPTER VII 

GIRLS AND BOYS OF MODERN EDINBURGH 

The Old Town of Edinburgh still swarms with 
children, but they are the children of the very poor. 
They live in the old closes and wynds, where the 
children of noblemen lived in bygone centuries ; they 
run in and out of old stone doorways, — doorways with 
armorial bearings carved above them, or the pious 
legends so beloved of the seventeenth-century people 
who built these homes — " Feare the Lord and Depart 
from Evil," or, " Blissit be God in al His Giftis " ; 
they keek out of windows high up, behind garments 
suspended to dry on a pole stuck out of every case- 
ment ; they climb up and down the dark, noisome 
turret stairs indoors ; they sit outside in the street in 
groups, on the forestairs, watching the sights of the 
streets, as did the gaily-dressed ladies of the past. A 
very different street, and very different sights ! But 
the children on the forestairs are the prettiest of the 
sights, just as the ladies used to be. Such bonny little 
tow-headed, or curly red-headed, creatures ! The 
motherly small girls with babies in their arms, and 
gossiping like their elders ; and all, boys and girls 
alike, with their little bare toes ! For very poor 
children in Edinburgh do not wear boots and stockings — 
they run about, even in winter, with nimble naked legs, 
and chilly, mud-stained feet. In hot summer weather 
it is evidently great fun to sit in rows on the edge of 
the causeway after a heavy shower of rain has filled the 
gutters, and splash these little bare feet, with complete 
abandon and shrill cries of delight, in the flowing stream. 



46 Edinburgh 

It is almost as good as going out of town, and is perhaps 
the nearest approach to country holidays they ever have. 

But the children of the poor are in many ways not 
so badly off as were the rich folks' children when the 
Old Town was the residence of the great, — and certainly 
they are not so uncared for as were the children of the 
poor in those days. Each door now in these high 
closes, — rabbit-warrens of human life, — is marked telling 
the number of cubic feet of air the room contains, and 
how many persons may live in it. Then there are the 
Board Schools to give poor children free education from 
the time they are five till they are fourteen ; there are 
the Infirmaries and the Sick Children's Hospital to 
give them free attendance when they are ill ; and since 
Queen Victoria's day there are the Jubilee Nurses to 
nurse them at their own homes ; and there are the 
Cripples' Home, the School for the Blind, the Deaf 
and Dumb School, Dr. Guthrie's Ragged Schools, the 
Boys' Brigade, Sunday Schools, Free Breakfasts, and 
last, but by no means least, there are the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the League of 
Pity, and the Children's Shelter, all in one building in 
the middle of the High Street. There are hundreds 
of enterprises, public and private, to make the children 
of the poor healthy and happy and of use to the world ; 
but of course, in spite of all, there are hundreds of 
unhappy, starved little children, with wizened, reproach- 
ful faces and miserable homes, in Edinburgh to-day. 

It is the very poorest who live in the closes of the 
Old Town ; but there are many as poor in the New 
Town and in the suburbs ; and there is one thing that 
the poor children of Edinburgh have that must seem to 
them the best thing of all, and that is the Parks and 
open spaces they have in which to play. 



Girls and Boys of To-day 47 

There are many of these in Edinburgh ; and they are 
jealously guarded for the children. Even the little 
ones of the Old Town can run on their little bare feet 
out of the foetid air of the wynds and closes, and in a 
minute or two be playing in the Queen's Park or on 
the green sides of Arthur's Seat. The Princes Street 
Gardens are free to all, and it does not take two minutes 
to run down some steep wynd from the Lawnmarket, 
by the Castle, and cross the top of the Mound to the 
gate leading into West Princes Street Gardens, and so 
along a rough little path, high above the gay flower- 
beds and walks and seats, and skirt round the edge 
of the cliffs of the Castle Rock, and over a crazy 
footbridge and some rocks that protrude through the 
path, and so to the ruins of the Well-House Tower, 
the only bit left of the fifteenth-century wall. 

Opened only this summer, there is the new park at 
Saughton, to the west of the town, taking in the old 
walled garden of Saughton House. And Edinburgh 
citizens are promised thousands of roses, and alfresco 
teas. 

The children of the South Side have still The 
Meadows, where Sir Walter Scott played, and also 
Bruntsneld Links, where very smoky-fleeced sheep 
crop, careless of golf-balls. 

And lastly, to the north of the town, there is the 
People's Park, a huge open space, fresh and wholesome, 
from which the very best view of Edinburgh can be 
seen, — a perfect panorama, spread out in the sunshine 
or seen through the mist, as the case may be, — what 
artists call " a broken sky-line," the Castle in the very 
centre, and many a church steeple and many a tower, 
new and old, the great clock-tower of the modern 
North British Railway Hotel, the beautiful, hoary, open 



48 Edinburgh 

arches of St. Giles's broken crown halfway down the 
ridge of the Old Town, and the steeple of St. Mary's 
Cathedral rising highest of all. " Peter " would no 
longer be able to lament, in his " Letters to his Kins- 
folk," about Edinburgh, that "the only want, if want 
there be, in the whole aspect of this City, is, some such 
type of the grandeur of Religion rearing itself in the 
air, in somewhat of its due proportion of magnitude 
and magnificence. It is the only great city, the first 
impression of whose greatness is not blended with ideas 
suggested by the presence of some such edifice, piercing 
the sky in splendour or in gloom, far above the frailer 
and lowlier habitations of those that come to worship 
beneath its roof." 

Beyond the town altogether, but not beyond the 
reach of little feet, even bare ones, there are still the 
hills and the open country round Edinburgh, where 
children may roam among grass and whins, with all 
the beautiful clean-washed colours of the Midlothian 
country spread before their eyes, and the sun on their 
shoulders, and the wind in their faces. How often, on 
Saturday afternoons, or on a holiday, does one meet in 
the lanes round Edinburgh little troops of bare-legged, 
eager-voiced, ragged bird's-nesters scanning the hedges ; 
or of venturesome children, often accompanied by the 
baby in an ancient perambulator, all tired and dragging 
along in charge of an older sister, a " wise-like wean " 
of some thirteen summers or so. They carry in their 
paws bunches of fading wild-flowers, or, if their walk 
has lain in the direction of the Canal, — that most Dutch 
little bit of Edinburgh, — one of the small boys may be 
bearing a bottle of water, and if you inquire you will 
be told it is " a fesh," and the bottle will be proudly 




'GREENBREEKS" LEADING THE POTTER ROW BOYS IN A "BICKER. 



Girls and Boys of To-day 49 

exhibited that you may see for yourself a fish about an 
inch long, somehow extracted from its native element. 
The elder sister will ask you the way back to some 
incredibly far-off home whence they have wandered, 
and whither they are now returning in the evening, to 
find the mother equally tired, for she will have spent 
her holiday in doing all the family washing, hanging 
it on the pole out of the window to dry, and then 
" redding up " the house for Sunday. 

And what about " gentlemen's bairns," as they used 
to be called in old days ? 

Well, they live now in the dull, dignified, formal, 
grey terraces and crescents and squares of the New 
Town ; and happy those little ones whose nursery 
windows, high up in the roof, look down on to the 
green trees of gardens across the way, and not merely 
to another row of staring windows opposite. 

The boys of Modern Edinburgh have a great many 
other schools now besides the Royal High School, and 
they do not learn Latin only, nor do they shoot the 
Town Bailies. The girls of Modern Edinburgh are no 
longer to be seen riding on sows, but neither have they 
learned to sit upright ; and the way in which they 
propel themselves along the streets by swinging one 
arm like a flail, would have shocked the soul of the 
Honble. Mrs. Ogilvie. 

The High School is still what James VI. made it, — 
the Royal High School ; and it is still the Town School, 
for its Governors are Edinburgh's Lord Provost and 
Council. But it is no longer in the old quarters to which 
Scott and Cockburn went; for in 1825, just after its 
first rival, the Academy, had been founded and was being 
built, the old High School roused itself into action. The 

ed. 7 



50 Edinburgh 

Academy was rearing a dull, low, classic building in a 
rather mean part of the North Side of the town ; but 
the High School possessed itself of a wonderful site, 
on the green slopes of Calton Hill ; and there, in the 
four years from July 1825 to June 1829, it erected 
a copy of the Athenian Temple of Theseus, — a huge 
mass of Greek columns and temples and wings, and 
two acres of playground right on the face of the hill. 
The High School then emerged from the Old Town 
and betook itself and all its traditions, — a proud proces- 
sion, Provost and Bailies, University professors and 
eminent citizens, former scholars, parents and boys, all 
to the music of a military band, — to its magnificent new 
quarters. And Lord Cockburn was so ecstatic that he 
forgot all about his floggings, and said in a speech that 
" with great experience and opportunity of observation, 
I certainly have never yet seen any one system so well 
adapted for training up good citizens, as well as learned 
and virtuous men, as the old High School of Edinburgh 
and the Scottish Universities . . . because men of the 
highest and lowest rank of society send their children 
to be educated together . . . they sit side by side." 
Alas ! Was it a case of — 

" Oh the auld hoose, the auld hoose, 
Deserted tho' ye be, 
There ne'er will be a new hoose . . ." ? 

Or was it, perhaps, the fact that at the newly- founded 
Academy the highest and lowest ranks were not educated 
together, and did not sit side by side ? 

Sir Walter Scott was one of the first directors of the 
Edinburgh Academy; and at the Opening, in 1825, he 
made a speech, and told " his young friends round him " 
that there was to be a class at this school not to be found 



Girls and Boys of To-day 5 1 

in any similar academy,— a class for the study of English 
Literature. A teacher was " to be added to the institu- 
tion " who should teach boys English composition and 
a knowledge of the history of their own country. Sir 
Walter Scott " would have the youths taught to venerate 
the patriots and heroes of our own country along with 
those of Greece and Rome ; to know the histories of 
Wallace and Bruce, as well as those of Themistocles and 
of Caesar ; and that the recollection of the fields of 
Flodden and Bannockburn should not be lost in those 
of Plataea and Marathon." 

To-day the school has had many a " teacher added to 
the institution," and the boys learn many kinds of know- 
ledge besides Latin and Greek. In 1909, at the opening 
of the new Science Department, the Academy boys of a 
newer generation were gathered, as were the boys of 
1825, to listen to one of the great men of their day. 
^ Greece and Rome and Scotland ? — Themistocles and 
Caesar and the Bruce ?— Plataea and Marathon and 
Flodden ?— Why, Sir William Ramsay took his hearers 
through earth and fire and water and air, hanging wildly 
on to the spectrum-coloured tails of elusive new elements! 
What would the Wizard of the North have thought, 
could he have entered the Academy lecture-hall that 
day and listened with the rest, lost in amazed awe, to 
the discoverer of argon lightly telling how through 
Earth and Heaven — or such fragments of Heaven as have 
condescended to fall on to Earth— he had stalked his 
prey ? Truly, the " fairy tales of Science " ; and certainly, 
— how many thousand times had he lifted that piece of 
apparatus? — "the long result of time." 

Besides these two chief day-schools — the High School 
and the Academy — there are several big public boarding- 



52 Edinburgh 

schools, — Loretto, Fettes, and Merchiston. The last is 
interesting because it is at one of the old historic houses 
left in Edinburgh, — Merchiston Castle, the home of the 
Napiers, and where the inventor of logarithms lived. 
Fettes College is only about fifty years old. It stands on 
the northern slopes, down towards the sea, and is on the 
English public-school system, with a central College 
and separate large "Houses," each under its "House 
Master " ; and it has a pretty Chapel. 

Then there are the great " Hospitals," — that is, the 
endowed schools. Most of these were founded by 
Edinburgh citizens who began life poor and ended it 
rich, and left their money to help other boys to make 
their way in. life. 

The chief of these " Hospitals " is Heriot's Hospital, 
founded by the famous goldsmith of James VI. 's day. 
George Heriot began life as a goldsmith's apprentice, 
and then started for himself with a tiny little booth or 
shop in Parliament Close, off the High Street. He 
rapidly became rich, and was made goldsmith to the 
Queen. Scotland in the seventeenth century was a 
poor country, and its King had not much money of his 
own, and greatly valued those of his richer subjects who 
supplied his wants. He had to depend on the private 
fortunes of those about him, and this explains the great 
favour in which " Jingling Geordie," as he called the 
goldsmith, was held. There is a well-known story that 
one day George Heriot had been sent for to Holyrood, 
and found his sovereign sitting by a fire of cedar-wood. 
The goldsmith noticed how pleasant the fragrance was 
which the cedar-wood made in burning. 

" Yes," said the King, who always thought a good 
deal about money, " and it is as costly as it is pleasant." 



Girls and Boys of To-day 53 

Heriot told the King that if he would pay him a visit 
in his little booth he would show him a costlier fire, and 
the King accepted the invitation and went, only to find 
an ordinary fire burning brightly. 

" Is this your costly fire ?" he asked. 

" Wait till I get my fuel, your Majesty," said Jing- 
ling Geordie ; and he took out of his press a bond for 
two thousand pounds he had lent the King, and put it 
on the top of the fire. 

A useful subject to a poor monarch, Jingling Geordie ! 

When George Heriot died he left money to endow a 
school for " Puir orphan and faderless boys, sons of 
freemen in Edinburgh." To this day Heriot's Hospital 
is one of the most beautiful buildings in all Edinburgh. 
Its architecture is said to be peculiar to Scotland, and it 
is certainly very impressive, with its quadrangle and its 
octagonal towers, its Chapel and its doorways. 

Other rich Edinburgh citizens left their money to 
found schools. George Watson, a merchant in Edin- 
burgh, who died in 1723, left money for a Hospital for 
sons and grandsons of merchants. This has now been 
changed into day-schools. Daniel Stewart, of the 
Exchequer, who died in 1 8 14, founded Stewart's Hospital 
for boys ; and John Watson, a Writer to the Signet, 
founded a Hospital which bears his name, and in it 
sons of Writers to the Signet are taken by preference. 
Donaldson, the printer, was more open-minded than any 
of these, for " Donaldson's Hospital " was founded to 
clothe, maintain and educate poor boys and girls for 
trade or domestic service. 

And lastly there is the Orphan Hospital, which has 
the old clock of the Netherbow Port in its clock tower ; 
and it also educates girls as well as boys. All these 



54 Edinburgh 

Hospitals stand in grounds of their own, and are large 
buildings, — some of them things of architectural beauty ; 
and in two of them, as we have seen, girls as well as 
boys are inmates, but in both of these the scholars are 
the " puir orphans, faderless children." What about the 
daughters of Edinburgh who are neither puir nor fader- 
less ? What education for girls is there in the town ? 

In the eighteenth century, while the boys had their 
High School, it was thought enough for the girls to go 
to a school kept in a private dwelling up a stair or two 
in a close. We have not got much farther nowadays, 
for whereas Edinburgh boys have their big public day- 
schools, and their vast palaces, like Fettes, the schools 
for their sisters are all in private houses, neither built 
nor intended for the purpose, and it is thought much if 
these private houses are on the outskirts of the town, — 
some disused old family mansion, — so that there is some 
form of garden, and not merely front-door steps and a 
" back green." The education in the dining-room and 
drawing-room is no doubt excellent, and the little girls 
are most carefully tended ; but some day, when the 
girls and boys of the Edinburgh of to-day are written 
about as the children of old days, it may happen that 
Edinburgh daughters as well as Edinburgh sons will have 
their great schools, and that brothers will not come home 
for the holidays from their palatial towers and quad- 
rangles, their Grecian columns and temples, their Chapels 
and windows and gateways, their playgrounds and cricket- 
fields and swimming-baths, their Greek and their Latin 
and their Science, their lecture-halls and laboratories, 
their libraries and their busaries, and feel themselves — 
small blame to them ! — such intensely superior beings 
to their street-bred sisters. 



Girls and Boys of To-day 55 

And the play-hours ? They would take a volume. 
And perhaps play-hours and games and parties are nowa- 
days pretty much the same in Edinburgh as those of 
the girls and boys of other towns. But Edinburgh may 
be very grateful for the new form of play that is not 
play at all, but good citizenship — the "Boy Scouts" 
and the " Girl Guides." Up and down the cold grey 
streets they march, workman-like little band in their 
serviceable khaki uniforms ; but chiefly are they decora- 
tive in the gardens, where much scouting goes on. Is 
this the evolution of the " Bickers "? 

Flat they lie on their faces, high up in the long grass 
among the flowering rhododendrons, silent, intent, and 
watchful. Far down below, on the smooth lawn, above 
the Water of Leith, another band is moving slowly, 
prodding the shaven, carefully-rolled turf, earnestly 
examining the newly-raked gravel-path. Suddenly, 
down upon them with whoops and a rush come the 
ambushed band. There is a wild skirmish ; but it is 
not they that the enemy from the ambush seek, — they 
scatter them and rush on to a seat on which lie a photo- 
graphic camera, two or three straps of school books, and 
an overcoat. These are hastily grabbed, and the enemy 
are off up the hill again with their plunder. 

"Oh, Brown! — I say! — that's not fair!" shouts one 
from below. 

" Who left their guns unprotected f comes the answer, 
in a voice of breathless triumph. 

What battles of the future, one wonders, are they to 
be that are now being fought in the flowery glades of 
the Dean Gardens ? 



56 Edinburgh 

CHAPTER VIII 

HOOD AND GOWN 

Edinburgh University stands, a grey, square, stern 
building, in a thronged, busy street leading right up 
from the east end of Princes Street to the southern 
suburbs. It stands on the very spot where, in 1567, 
Darnley, the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, was 
blown up by gunpowder. Then it was outside the town, 
but now the University has tramway cars in front of it, 
shops all round it, and slums clustering at its back. 
This stern grey college is " the University Old Build- 
ings," and a little way off, facing " The Meadows," are 
" the University New Buildings," built within the 
memory of this generation. They are chiefly given over 
to the Medical and Science classes and laboratories. 
Between the two are other buildings belonging to, or 
connected with, the University, — the McEwan Hall, the 
Music Class-room, the Men Students' Union. But it is 
round " the University Old Buildings," built at the 
beginning of the nineteenth century on the original site 
of the old college buildings, that tradition clings. 

Edinburgh University is the youngest of the four 
Scottish Universities. St. Andrews had been founded at 
the beginning of the fifteenth century, while James I. 
was a prisoner in England ; Glasgow in the middle of 
the fifteenth century, in James II. 's reign ; Aberdeen at 
the end of the fifteenth century, in James IV.'s reign. 
But Edinburgh, the Capital, was not a University town 
for nearly another century, — not until 1582. 

The University of Edinburgh is always called " the 
Protestant University," because it was built in the 
Protestant days of James VI., whereas the earlier Uni- 




SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 1822. 
From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn. 



Hood and Gown 57 

versities were founded in Roman Catholic days, by Papal 
Bull. But it is hardly truthful, and it is certainly un- 
grateful, to give all the credit to the Protestants and the 
Town, for the earliest benefactor of Edinburgh Uni- 
versity was a Catholic Bishop, — Robert Reid, Abbot of 
Kinloss and Bishop of Orkney. This Robert Reid died 
in 1 558, and left 8,000 merks — a big sum in those days — 
to found "a College of Edinburgh "; and it was actually 
this sum that the Edinburgh magistrates used, twenty- 
four years later, to buy the site on which " the Protestant 
University " was reared, and on which it stands to-day. 

If all the founders and benefactors and promoters of 
our institutions and charities were allowed to return to 
Earth on All Hallows Eve, and to flit about in ghostly 
fashion, pass by their own statues, find themselves in 
streets christened after them, enter buildings dedicated 
to them, or carrying on work for the world's good which 
they began, — if such a thing were to happen, would not 
that All Hallows Night be, as the refrain of a Cowboy 
chorus says, " Their night to howl " ? 

Certainly there would be, on such an All Hallows 
Night in Edinburgh, one lonely soul who would stand 
aghast in our University quadrangle, and not give even 
Darnley's shattered spirit first place for pathos. 

The Abbot in the quadrangle would be a very courtly 
ghost. In his day he had been a scholar, a courtier, a 
lawyer, an ambassador ; he had built Churches, gathered 
libraries, travelled on royal embassies, been the second 
Lord President of the Court of Session, had encouraged 
art and learning, and founded other colleges besides 
that at Edinburgh, — one, for instance, at Kirkwall, the 
Capital of his Diocese, for teaching country youths 
grammar and philosophy. He had drawn up an admir- 

ed. 8 



58 Edinburgh 

able scheme for the college he wished to endow at 
Edinburgh ; and then he had died at Dieppe, — died very 
mysteriously with several others, as people did occasion- 
ally in those days, — as he returned from witnessing the 
marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to her first husband, 
the Dauphin of France. And now ? — the ghost of the 
Abbot of Kinloss and Bishop of Orkney might flit over 
the quadrangle to the spirit of Sir David Brewster, lean- 
ing against the pedestal of his own statue, and ask for 
information. 

" I beseech you to tell me, good Sir, is this the 
colledge within the Burgh of Edinburgh, for exerceis 
of leirning thairinto, quhilk umqhhill I bequeathed in 
my testament the sowme of aucht thousand merkis?" 

And Sir David Brewster would reply shortly : 

"You're very far out, Abbot. Your name's never 
mentioned here." 

In the twenty-four years between the Founder's death 
and the building of the University much had happened 
in Scotland. Darnley had been blown up ; Queen Mary 
had been imprisoned for fourteen years in England ; 
John Knox had been dead for fourteen years ; and 
Scotland had become a Protestant country. No Papal 
Bull was needed, only a Charter signed, in April 1582, 
by sixteen-year-old James VI., to empower the Lord 
Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council to found the 
University of Edinburgh. 

Kirk o' Field, the purchased site, was at that time 
a place of fields and gardens outside the town, with 
some Church edifices and other buildings straggling over 
it — including the family mansion of the Hamiltons. The 
Town authorities purchased it with the Bishop's bequest 
in June 1582, and apparently their further funds were not 



Hood and Gown 59 

great, for they did not attempt to build a University, 
but only proceeded to alter and add to the buildings 
already there. Then they appointed the first " Provost " 
or professor, and he lectured in the lower hall of 
Hamilton House. His name was Robert Rollock, and 
he came to Edinburgh from a professorship of philo- 
sophy at St. Andrews University. He was a young 
man of twenty-eight years of age, round-headed, his 
ruddy face surmounted and surrounded by hair and 
short beard, both of reddish hue. His name and colour- 
ing somehow suggest the Three R's ; but he had to 
instruct u everie bairne repairing to the said coledge " 
in much more learned subjects, Latin and Theology, — 
and, in a year or two, in Theology also. 

This was the first of our Edinburgh professors. 
What a list of notable names comes after his ! 

It seems that the Edinburgh Magistrates did not 
have to lay out any money on the University library, 
any more than they had to do so on the University 
site, for it was fortunate that in 1580, two years before 
the University was founded, an Edinburgh advocate, 
Mr. Clement Little, had bequeathed his library to 
" Edinburgh and Kirk of God thair to reman," and this 
library was appropriated by the Magistrates for their 
new University. These books are chiefly theological, 
but they were soon added to, for Drummond of 
Hawthornden, the poet, left a large number of books 
to the University, including a few of the earlier editions 
of Shakespeare's plays. There they are still, with 
Drummond of Hawthornden's beautiful handwriting in 
them, treasured in the strong-room of our University 
library. There also are the volumes of the original 
library of Mr. Clement Little, and many other treasures, 



60 Edinburgh 

for the library has been richly endowed from time to 
time ; and here in the strong-room are books wonderful 
to handle, rare manuscripts, illumined missals, beautiful 
soft specimens of early printers' work, and bindings with 
great clasps and bosses, relics of the days of scholarship 
and leisure and devotion. 

And so, the Magistrates having laid out the Abbot's 
bequest with one hand, and commandeered the Advocate's 
bequest with the other, the University prospered, and 
they took all the credit. No, not all. There was yet 
King James to come. He came in 1616. It was 
thirty-five years since, a boy of sixteen, he had signed 
the Charter, and it was fourteen years since he had left 
Scotland to be King of England as well, and he came 
back to visit his ancient Kingdom of Scotland. He 
found the youngest Scottish University thriving, 
" beginning to take notice," as nurses say of babies. 
So he christened it, and stood Godfather. He said it 
was " worthie to be honoured with our name," and that 
it was " to be callit in all times herafter by the name of 
King James's College," and gave it a " Royal Godbairn 
gift " of lands and tithes in Lothian and Fife. 

At first, the University must have been more like a 
school than a University, and the students, — though 
they were far more independent than are the students 
of English Universities, were allowed to live where they 
pleased in the town, were not under the authority of 
the University except in bounds, and wore no especial 
dress, yet were in themselves mere schoolboys. We 
have seen how they " bickered " in the streets with the 
boys of other schools, and we find them spoken of in 
the Burgh Records as " bairns." Moreover, the ancient 
practice that Solomon recommended seems to have been 



Hood and Gown 61 

resorted to by the early professors, for at Edinburgh, as 
well as in other Universities, unruly students were 
birched. But on one occasion the son of the Lord 
Provost was birched, and this gave dire offence to the 
City Magistrates, who were the patrons and governors 
of the University, and considered themselves and their 
sons entitled to all respect at its hands. So the birching 
of the Lord Provost's son, though it may not have im- 
proved him, improved the University — there was no 
more birching after that. 

The interference by the Magistrates was not always so 
happy for the University. The Magistrates were not 
learned men and knew little about education, and it must 
have been very irksome to the professors of early days 
to have to submit to their ruling in matters concerning 
learning and education. There was much friction be- 
tween Town and Gown. On one occasion, so regardless 
of the dignity of the University had the Town become, 
that the Magistrates actually dared to a borrow" the Uni- 
versity Mace, and to forget to return it for four years. 

In matters of teaching as well as discipline the 
students were treated as schoolboys. For more than a 
hundred years they were taught as is the fashion in 
boys' schools, — that is, one professor, or "regent," as 
he was called, taught his own group of students all the 
subjects for three or four years. But this is not our 
modern idea of a University. We expect a professor 
to be a man famous in some special subject, and who 
has devoted all his life to it, and can inspire others to 
do the same. For a University is not a place merely 
to train people for different professions and ways of 
making money. The ideal University is a place where 
anyone who wants to study any subject, — no matter 



62 Edinburgh 

how unknown and out of the way and " specialized " 
the subject may be, — can receive the very best teaching 
to be had in that subject, and find the best methods,— 
in laboratories and libraries, — of learning all that it is 
possible to learn about it. 

In 1708 a new system was introduced; and since 
then Edinburgh University has had a separate professor 
for every subject. So far so good ; — but in those days 
there were only three hundred students, and they were 
all Divinity students or Arts students ; and there were 
only eight professors ! 

In 1707 a Professor of Public Law was appointed, 
and this began the Legal Faculty in Edinburgh ; and 
in 1720 a Professor of Anatomy was appointed, and 
that was the beginning of the great Medical School of 
Edinburgh, now — thanks to its having had so many 
eminent professors, — famous all the world over. 

And there have been great names in the other 
Faculties also, — in Arts, in Law, in Divinity. To give 
a list of the men that Edinburgh University is proud 
of would take too long ; but a few must be mentioned. 
Dugald Stewart, the metaphysician ; Dr. Alexander 
Munro, who really began the Medical School ; Pro- 
fessor Cullen ; Professor Black, of " latent heat " fame ; 
Lister, — does not the whole of Listerian surgery date 
from Edinburgh University ? Dr. Chalmers ; Sir 
David Brewster ; John Goodsir ; Aytoun, author of 
" Lays of the Cavaliers " ; Sir James Y. Simpson, the 
discoverer of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform ; 
Sir Lyon Playfair ; Professor Tait. 

The present buildings — " the University Old Build- 
ings," — date from the end of the eighteenth century and 
beginning of the nineteenth. The original plan was 



Hood and Gown 63 

designed by the architect Adam, who built so much of 
the New Town of Edinburgh ; but lack of funds caused 
years of delay, and when finally, in 1 8 1 5, an annual grant 
of ten thousand pounds from Parliament quickened the 
process of building, Adam's plans were altered by 
another architect, Piayfair. 

In 1858 the University, which had long since come 
to be called " Edinburgh University," instead of " the 
Town College," was enabled, by the Universities Act, 
to finally throw off the control of the Town, and now 
the Senatus Academicus (the Principal and Professors) 
regulates the teaching and discipline, subject to the 
control of the University Court ; and the Lord Provost 
and one member of the Town Council are members 
of this Court, to represent the old order which had 
prevailed for two hundred and seventy-six years. 

In 1884 Edinburgh University celebrated its "Ter- 
centenary," — its three-hundredth birthday. It was a 
most brilliant week in Edinburgh, that week in April 
1884, for the University had invited all the greatest 
celebrities of Europe to her birthday party, — invited 
guests from England and Ireland, from our Colonies, 
from America, from France, Germany, Austria, Italy, 
Russia, Greece. Every country in Europe, and Britain 
beyond the seas, had sent of its greatest men — authors 
and thinkers, divines and men of science, discoverers, 
philosophers, historians, statesmen, soldiers, — names to 
thrill the pulses and fire the brain. The grey streets 
of the sober old city were enlivened by flashes of 
academic colours, and her halls were lit up by flashes 
of foreign eyes and foreign wits. All the guests were 
feted and lionized ; the hospitable private houses were 
thrown open for their entertainment ; they were feasted 



64 Edinburgh 

and they were listened to, and were one and all given an 
honorary degree of Edinburgh University. And then 
they all went home, and Edinburgh sobered down again. 
It has always been a feature of Edinburgh University 
that she " thinks Imperially." To attend a Graduation 
Ceremonial is to receive a lesson on the number of 
races that live under the British Flag. Students from 
all parts of the world come to Edinburgh University ; 
but especially students from Britain beyond the Seas, — 
from India, from Australia, from New Zealand, from 
Canada, from South Africa, from Newfoundland. It 
seems impossible that anyone brought up at Edinburgh 
University, enjoying the education of such contacts, 
should ever go out into the world a " Little Englander." 

And now, since 1894, there is another feature of 
Edinburgh University. She has admitted women. 
Most of the women students are Arts students, — in the 
Arts Course there have of late years sometimes been 
more women than men ; but there are a large number 
of women Medical students — not yet quite so hospitably 
treated as the men as regards their training, but quite as 
hospitably treated as regards their examinations, — and 
there are women Science students, and women students 
of Music. They have their academic life, — their 
Union and their Debating Societies, their Conservative 
Association and their Liberal Association ; and at the 
Graduation Ceremonials nearly as many women as men 
go up in their academic hoods and gowns to be " capped" 
by the Chancellor. And they, too, are gathered from all 
parts of the world. 

" What made you think of coming here?" it was 
asked of one girl graduate who was from South Africa. 

" Well, 1 think it was because my father is an Edin- 




JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND AS A BOY. 
From the painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery, Londoi 



Wig and Gown 65 

burgh man, and he is very loyal to his old Alma Mater, 
and often talks of it. So my brother and I both decided 
to come here." 

What would Robert Rollock have thought! For 
that matter, what would any professor forty years ago ? 

But with some of them even then it was an as yet 
unrealized dream. 

CHAPTER IX 

WIG AND GOWN 

" La Salle des pas perdus," it has been called — the hall 
of lost footsteps. 

Up and down, down and up, the great Hall they pace 
daily, the members of His Majesty's Bar, in their black 
gowns and grey wigs — tall men with gowns flapping about 
their knees, short men with gowns to their ankles ; big- 
headed men with little wigs set awry atop of their 
craniums, and their own hair showing beneath ; small- 
headed men with the stiff curls of their wigs well down 
over their ears. And here they, or those who went 
before them, have paced and loitered up and down for 
almost two hundred years, ever since the Union of 
Scotland and England sent our Scottish statesmen to help 
to govern England as well as Scotland, and left the Parlia- 
ment House in Edinburgh empty for the use of the legal 
world of the Scottish Capital, — a la Salle des pas perdus." 

Where have all the footsteps led ? Some have never 
led beyond this Hall. Many a man has paced here 
from the time he was " called " to the Scottish Bar till he 
was called to a higher tribunal. He has grown grey while 
pacing, — grey and disappointed, wearied and dulled, 
— and has passed away, having done nothing nobler 
than to live and die. But not all. All have not been lost 

ed. 9 



66 Edinburgh 

footsteps. Hundreds have led to worldly success and 
wealth. Hundreds have led to great public careers 
and fame. Hundreds, — better still, — have led to lives 
spent for the general welfare. Some have led to 
European reputations. Some of the footsteps have led 
to immortality. Some ? Well, one at least. Sir Walter 
Scott has paced this floor. 

It is a difficult profession. Often the best men get 
to the front, but sometimes they are outdistanced and 
shoved behind by mere astuteness, or by a stroke of good 
luck, on the part of others less worthy. It is the same, 
no doubt, at the London Bar. " He is a rising man," 
one hears ; and he rises rapidly, like Jonah's gourd, for 
next time one hears him spoken of it is with another 
prefix before his name. Or else, also like Jonah's 
gourd, he is never mentioned again. 

A beautiful and dignified setting, this ancient Scottish 
Parliament Hall. Perhaps, had the Town and citizens 
known that the Scottish Parliaments were to meet for 
only sixty-seven years after its completion, they would 
not have spent so much money on it, and on the great 
arched black oak roof, its arches crossed and interlocked 
and resting on one another, high overhead. Here, 
only eleven years after it was built, Montrose's trial 
took place. Here Cromwell's troopers gathered. Here 
the beauty and chivalry of Edinburgh feasted at the 
Restoration. But the chief use of the Parliament Hall 
was for meetings of the Parliament. 

When Scotland had her own Parliament, it was a 
one-chambered House. But — it was not a House of 
Commons, rather was it a House of Peers. Of its 
three hundred and fourteen members, ten were Dukes, 
three Marquesses, seventy-five Earls, seventeen Vis- 



Wig and Gown 67 

counts, fifty-two Barons, ninety Knights of Shires, and 
only sixty- seven were Burgesses. 

It was to Parliament House that the " Riding to the 
Parliament " came from Holyrood, — the yearly cere- 
monial of the Opening of Parliament, when the Sovereign, 
or the Lord High Commissioner representing the 
Sovereign, was conducted in a great procession, — " a 
very stately and pompous Cavalcade," Maitland calls it 
in his history. This was its order : — Two Trumpeters ; 
two Pursuivants; the sixty-seven Burgesses, two by two, 
each attended by a footman ; four Door-keepers of the 
Court of Session, two by two ; the ninety Knights of 
Shires, two by two, each attended by two footmen ; Com- 
moners and Officers of State, two by two ; two Door- 
keepers of the Privy Council Chamber ; the Peers in 
their robes — first the fifty-two Barons, attended by train- 
bearers, pages, and three footmen each ; then the seven- 
teen Viscounts, attended by train-bearers, pages, and 
three footmen each ; then the seventy-five Earls, 
attended by train-bearers, pages, and four footmen each ; 
then the three Marquesses, attended by train-bearers, 
pages, and six footmen each ; then the ten Dukes, 
attended by train-bearers, pages, and eight footmen each. 
The Dukes were followed by the Lord High Chan- 
cellor, bearing the Great Seal. Then came four Trum- 
peters, two by two, and four Pursuivants, two by two, 
six Heralds, the Gentleman Usher, and then the Lyon 
King of Arms. He was followed by three of the most 
ancient of the nobles, bearing the Scottish Regalia, 
which had been conveyed that morning from the Castle 
to Holyrood to be in readiness. The Sword of State 
came first, then the Sceptre, then the Crown, and a Mace 
walked on either hand of each of these. Finally rode 



68 Edinburgh 

the Sovereign, or the Commissioner who represented 
the Sovereign ; and the Cavalcade wound up by a troop 
of Life Guards. 

Arrived at Parliament House, the King, or the Lord 
High Commissioner, was led to the throne by the Lord 
High Constable and the Earl Marischal, and the Regalia 
was laid on the table in front of him. 

Little wonder that the gaping crowd had their 
patriotism and loyalty stirred by such pageantry, and 
that they were ignorantly unwilling to exchange it for 
the larger future opened out to Scotland — and to 
England too — by the Treaty of Union. 

But the removal of the political centre to London 
naturally changed altogether the character of Edinburgh 
Society, and in no way more so than by leaving the 
lawyers in possession, not of Parliament House only, 
but of the whole command of public life. In the 
absence of other aristocracy, the legal lights became the 
leaders of society in the Capital. This has been 
modified in late years by other great interests springing 
up in Edinburgh, and enriching its society ; and also by 
the fact that the members of the Bar are now no longer 
altogether drawn, as used to be the case, from among the 
younger sons of noble houses or great landed families, 
but are rather the clever elder sons of professional men. 

But Parliament House casts a legal shadow over all 
Edinburgh. How many a door in the dignified stone 
terraces and streets and crescents bears a brass plate 
with a name and the word " Advocate " underneath ! 
And in some of the cold northerly streets, where the 
top windows command a view of the sea, and legal 
firms have their dwellings, or in the great wind-swept 
squares, where papers and dust eddy at their ease, and 



Wig and Gown 69 

legal firms do congregate, there the doors show many 
brass plates, one above the other, each bearing below 
the names the mystic letters " W.S." or " S.S.C." Yes, 
it is a very legal town. It is told that once the love- 
letter of an Edinburgh swain began : " Madam, In 
answer to your duplies, received of date as per margin." 
One of the first sights that the stranger to Edinburgh 
is taken to see is Parliament House, and the first thing 
he is shown there is the great Parliament Hall. But 
he will not be told about the Scottish Parliaments from 
1639 to I 7°75 ne will De invited to look, awe-struck, 
at the pacing, loitering, whispering, gossiping, jesting 
crowd of wigs and gowns — advocates, solicitors, agents, 
writers, and litigants ; and then he will be shown the 
statues of Lord Melville and Lord President Blair by 
Chantrey, and that by Roubillac of Duncan Forbes of 
Colloden ; and the splendid series of portraits, all the 
great Edinburgh Judges and Lord Advocates and Deans 
of the Faculty and Presidents of the Court of Session, 
— such clever faces ! — Some such beautiful faces, fine 
in expression ; some so dissipated ; but one and all so 
clever ! The portraits are many of them by Raeburn, and 
there is one by Kneller, and of the later ones some are 
the work of Sir Daniel Macnee, of Sir George Reid, 
of Sargent, of Orchardson. And then, passing through 
the throng to the top of the Hall, the visitor will be 
shown the great window, representing James V. of 
Scotland, — the dear " Red Tod," the Founder of the 
Court of Session, — presenting Pope Clement VII. 's 
Charter to Alexander Mylne, Abbot of Cambuskenneth, 
the first President of the Court of Session, and Bishop 
Gavin Dunbar blessing the act. This Alexander Mylne 
was the elder son of the first Royal Master Mason of 



70 Edinburgh 

that name, — and the line, carried on by his brother, con- 
tinued till 1 8 1 1, — twelve generations in direct descent, 
all Royal Master Masons. Alexander Mylne, whom 
James V. appointed first President of the new Court of 
Session, was prominent in his day both in Church and 
State, an ecclesiastic, a statesman, a lawyer, an author, 
and an architect. In those days the President had to 
be an ecclesiastic, as most of the revenues came from 
the Church, and also because the clergy were the only 
class trained in law. Nowadays it is the lawyers who 
seek to rule the Church. 

It is curious that both great facts in Edinburgh life, 
Hood and Gown and Wig and Gown, seem to have 
had an Abbot at their source. 

The stranger, having had the window explained to 
him, will be taken through the modern corridors that 
lead out of the Hall to the stuffy Court-rooms, that he 
may stand and hear the eloquence of Judge or Counsel. 
Then he will be taken to the Library to see the treasures. 

The Advocates' Library was founded by Sir George 
Mackenzie, King's Advocate in the reigns of Charles II. 
and James VII. He was a man of letters and the friend 
and correspondent of Dryden ; but what is recollected 
of him in Edinburgh is that he was the prosecutor of the 
Covenanters. His books are in the Advocates' Library, 
and his tomb is in Greyfriars Churchyard ; and in old 
days the little street-boys used to come to the gate of it, 
and peep in through the little squares of open ironwork, 
and call out : 

" Bluidy Mackingie, come oot if ye daur ! 
Lift the sneck and draw the bar !" — 

and then run away as quickly as their little Noncon- 
forming legs would carry them. 



Wig and Gown 71 

The Advocates' Library, as the present Keeper writes 
of it, has since the middle of the eighteenth century 
" become universally recognized as being not only the 
national library, but the natural place of deposit for 
national records and relics." And indeed it is this. 
Not only does it now number about 500,000 volumes, 
not only is it the only library in Scotland which has 
retained the right to receive a copy of every book pub- 
lished in Great Britain, but, as the same writer says, 
" from earliest date the Faculty has pursued the 
generous policy of giving ample access to the Library 
to all genuine workers in literature and science." One 
such " genuine worker in literature " was Thomas 
Carlyle, who used it as a young man, and wrote of it 
gratefully long afterwards. There have been countless 
others. As for " national records and relics," is there 
not, over the stair, the Standard of the Earl Marshal of 
Scotland, saved from Flodden field by Black John 
Skirving of Plewland Hill ? But the priceless treasures 
are in the " Laigh Parliament House," that pillared, 
vaultlike hall under the Parliament Hall, in which the 
Privy Council met, and where, it is alleged, torture took 
place. Here, on an easel, is the Bull sent by the Pope 
to grant to Scotland the right to crown and anoint her 
Kings. It was sent in answer to a petition from Robert 
the Bruce. Here, each reverently curtained, are the two 
Covenants, — the " Solemn League and Covenant " and 
the " National Covenant." Here, in glass cases, are 
valuable manuscripts, — manuscripts of the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Here are the Bas- 
sendine Bible, and all kinds of wonderful and rare 
specimens of early printing, both home and foreign. 
Here are many letters, among which, — most interesting 



"j 2 Edinburgh 

of all to younger visitors, and pathetic enough to any, — 
are some letters written by little royal children, — the 
child letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, to her mother, 
Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V. ; and one of 
Charles, afterwards Charles I., to his father, James I. 
and VI. Both these little innocent writers afterwards 
died on the scaffold. Here is Prince Charles's, — undated, 
but probably written to his father in London from Holy- 
rood, where he was being brought up under his tutor, 
Robert Carey : — 

" SwEETE 

Sweete Father i learne to decline substatives and adiectives. 
give me your blessing, i thank you for my best man. 

Your loving sone, 
To my Father the King." York. 

Scarcely less affectionate is the letter of one of the 

little sons of James VI. 's youngest daughter, Elizabeth, 

to his grandfather : — 

"S r 

I kisse your hand. I would fain see yo r Ma tie . I can say 
Nominativo hie, haec, hoc, and all 5 delensions, and a part of 
pronomen and a part of verbrum. I have two horses alive, that 
can goe up my staires a blacke horse, and a chestnut horse. I pray 
God to blesse your Ma tie . 

Yo r Ma ties 

obedient Grand-child, 

Frederick Henry." 

Evidently King James's respect for Latin, learnt in 
his boyhood at the knee of George Buchanan, and 
shown in his keen personal interest in the Royal High 
School of Edinburgh, had not deserted him when he 
was King of England. And his son, and long after- 
wards his grandchildren, knew this. 

When the stranger reluctantly tears himself from the 
Laigh Parliament House, he has, having seen it and the 
Parliament Hall and the Court-rooms, seen all that there 



Wig and Gown 73 

is to be shown. And he may, or may not, have grasped 
the system of our Scottish Law Court Procedure. But 
he has still to hear the stories of the Scottish lawyers of 
the Past. 

The judge of whom, perhaps, most stories are told, 
is Lord Braxfield. Lord Cockburn describes him as 
" illiterate, and without any taste for refined enjoyment, 
strength of understanding, which gave him power with- 
out cultivation, only encouraged disdain of all natures 
less coarse than his own." He was harsh and domineer- 
ing, and with a kind of brutal joviality, which Lord 
Cockburn excuses as " not cruelty," but a " cherished 
coarseness." It was Lord Braxfield who told a prisoner 
who had pleaded his own cause, " Ye're a very clever 
chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging." 

Still more incredibly brutal was Lord Karnes when he 
had before him, charged with murder, a man named 
Matthew Hay, with whom he had often played chess. 
After pronouncing the death sentence upon him, " That's 
checkmate to you, Matthew !" he added. 

Another judge of whom many stories are told is 
Lord Eskgrove, or " Esky " as he was usually called. 
The wags of Parliament House of his Hay used to 
imitate his peculiarities. Lord Cockburn relates that it 
was a common sight to see a knot of persons in Parlia- 
ment Hall all listening to one of their number who was 
talking slowly, with low muttering voice and a projected 
chin, — and then suddenly the listeners would burst 
asunder in roars of laughter, and one knew that an 
imitation of " Esky " was going on. Walter Scott was 
one of the young advocates who was famous for being 
able to caricature him. 

If Lord Cockburn's description is a true one, " Esky " 

ED. 10 



74 Edinburgh 

must indeed have been a decorative oddity. It is worth 
quoting. 

" He seemed, in his old age," he says, " to be about 
the average height ; but as he then stooped a good deal, 
he might have been taller in reality. His face varied, 
according to circumstances, from a scurfy red to a scurfy 
blue; the nose was prodigious ; the under lip enormous, 
and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like 
the jaw of an exaggerated Dutch toy. He walked with 
a slow, stealthy step — something between a walk and a 
hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his 
elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. His voice 
was low and mumbling, and on the Bench was generally 
inaudible for some time after the movement of the lips 
showed that he had begun speaking." 

Nevertheless, he was kinder to the poor wretched 
prisoners before him than was either Lord Braxfleld or 
Lord Karnes, for what this extraordinary absurdity used to 
say to a man he had just condemned to death was this : — 

" Whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or 
even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, 
there are plenty of rever-end gentlemen who will be most 
happy for to show you the way to yeternal life." 

Most of these judges, — as were unfortunately so many 
men, and wise and great men too, in the eighteenth 
century, — were hard drinkers. It was the days when 
men boasted of being " two-bottle men " and " three- 
bottle men." It was claret they drank ; but they drank 
too much. 

There is a story of a learned judge who was found on 
a dust-heap in the morning, and neither he nor anyone 
else seems to have been ashamed of the position. 
Indeed, the men of those days were rather proud of 



Wig and Gown 75 

their drinking, and it is very unfortunate that a good 
many of our laws and regulations concerning drinking 
were apparently framed in those days, and are rather for 
the care and protection of the drunken people than for 
their punishment. 

There was a judge called Lord Hermand (all Scottish 
judges have the courtesy title "Lord ") of whom the 
story is told that when he was trying a young man who 
had killed a friend in a drunken quarrel, he exclaimed, 
" Why, he was drunk ! And yet he murdered the very 
man who had been drinking with him ! ... if he will 
do this when he is drunk, what will he not do when he 
is sober ?" 

Once an advocate was not sober when he began to 
plead, and pleaded most eloquently, — but on the wrong 
side ! Indignation on the part of his client, whom he 
ought to have been defending, and whom he was 
denouncing instead ! It was all in vain that his agent 
and those near pulled his gown and signed to him and 
frowned at him — on he went, a long and fervid speech. 
At last someone slipped a paper into his hand. He 
glanced down and read, " You have pled for the wrong 
party." Perhaps this sobered him, — at any rate his wits 
never failed him, for he simply turned again to the 
judge and went on pleading, "Such, my Lord, is the 
statement which you will probably hear from my brother 
on the opposite side of the case. I shall now beg leave, 
in a very few words, to show your Lordship how 
utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted 
are the facts, upon which this very specious statement 
has proceeded." Which he then did. 

But " I hate scandal," as the old lady said at intervals 
while she was telling shocking tales of all her neighbours. 



76 Edinburgh 

Let us come to the memorable names and splendid 
memories of Parliament House. 

There have been great lawyers on the Scottish 
Bench. James Dalrymple, afterwards the first Viscount 
Stair, Lord President of the Court of Session towards 
the end of the seventeenth century, was not only one 
of the most able of lawyers and administrators, but 
was also a soldier and a philosopher, — had, indeed, held 
a Chair of Philosophy in Glasgow ; and he wrote a 
learned legal tome. 

Sir Thomas Hope, King's Advocate during Charles I.'s 
reign, was an interesting figure apart from his law. He 
was the grandson of John de Hope, of the family of 
Des Houblons in Picardy, who had come over from 
France in the train of James V. and his first little bride, 
Madeline, daughter of Francis I. of France. His fragile 
little Queen died a few weeks after her coming ; but 
John de Hope did not find our winds so rough, and 
settled in Scotland, and from him are descended many 
of our old Scottish families, — the Hopes, the Hoptouns, 
some of the Erskines, and the Bruces of Kinross. Sir 
Thomas Hope had several sons, three of whom were 
judges, and in the portrait of him in Parliament House, 
and also in another one in the possession of one of his 
descendants, he is represented as wearing a kind of head- 
dress, — the Parliament House one is like a lace cap, but 
in the private portrait what he wears looks like a laurel 
wreath, — but the reason of this head covering is that it 
was not considered dignified or proper that a father 
should plead bareheaded before his sons ! 

Sir Thomas Hope was one of the two lawyers who 
drew up the National League and Covenant. 

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who founded 
the Library, was King's Advocate later in the Century. 



Wig and Gown 77 

In the eighteenth century two names at very least 
must be mentioned. First, that of Duncan Forbes of 
Colloden, who was Lord Advocate and then Lord 
President, was a politician as well as an administrator, 
and, though so humane to those who were in trouble 
for the Jacobite Rising of 17 15 that he was accused 
of being a Jacobite himself, yet was really the pillar 
of the House of Hanover in Scotland. He tried to 
prevent the second Rising of '45, and then was active 
in lessening Scotland's sufferings after it ; and he died 
impoverished and unrewarded. 

Next must be mentioned Henry Dundas, first 
Viscount Melville. His was a career of statesmanship 
rather than a legal career. He entered Parliament as 
Member for Midlothian, was appointed Lord Advocate 
and held the office all through the Tory administration 
of Lord North, and was Pitt's trusted colleague and 
adviser all the time Pitt was Premier. He held various 
offices, — Treasurer of the Navy, Minister for India, 
Home Secretary, Secretary for War, First Lord of the 
Admiralty. Henry Dundas has been called " the King 
of Scotland," and was the central figure in all Scottish 
affairs, and for seventeen years ruled Scotland, — " The 
Dundas Despotism." His monument now stands on 
its column high over the city, in the centre of St. Andrew 
Square, — the only monument that can compare with it is 
the Nelson Monument in the centre of Trafalgar Square. 

In the nineteenth century two names also stand out 
among the many that might be chosen, those of Lord 
Brougham and Chancellor Inglis. Lord Brougham's 
fame extended beyond the city in which he was born. 
He defended Queen Caroline ; he was Lord High 
Chancellor of Great Britain ; and he was Chancellor 
of Edinburgh University. 



78 Edinburgh 

Lord Inglis first made his name by his successful 
defence of Madeline Smith, and he afterwards became 
one of our greatest judges, was Lord Justice General 
and Lord President, and Chancellor of our University. 
His name brings us very near the present day, for he 
died in 1 891. 

These are some of the men who, down the centuries, 
have administered Law in Scotland and upheld the 
dignity of the Court of Session. Their footsteps have 
paced Parliament Hall, and their portraits now hang on 
its walls, looking down at their successors. 

CHAPTER X 

WINTER IN EDINBURGH 

Winter is " the Season " in Edinburgh, and it is also 
the busy time when everyone is in town and everything 
is going on, — schools, University Session, Law Courts, 
art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, political meetings, 
balls, dinner-parties, bazaars. 

As a rule Edinburgh does not take very active interest 
in new ideas. Enthusiasm for antiquity is understood, 
and some forms of it are tolerated, but any other form 
of enthusiasm finds itself " up against it," as the 
Americans say, in Edinburgh. The majority of the 
citizens are exceedingly Conservative in everything, — 
except their politics. They do each year as they have 
done the previous year, and, if possible, what their 
fathers and mothers did before them. It is even hinted 
that their politics come to them by the truly Conservative 
method of inheritance, and are the result of their fathers' 
or their grandfathers' admiration of Mr. Gladstone. 

But, if Edinburgh can be roused to interest or activity 



Winter in Edinburgh 79 

at all, it is between October and March. " Now we 
shall have to wait until October," it is said in February 
or March, when some function has to be postponed. 
Thus people who have met constantly all the winter 
months lose sight of one another during the summer, 
and have to re-begin their intercourse all over again 
when October brings them back to town and work and 
sociability. Sometimes they have been away all summer ; 
or it may merely be that they have had no reason nor 
opportunity of meeting. In October they all forgather 
again, and "Where have you been ?" neighbours ask; and 
" I suppose you are back now for the winter ?" But the 
friendliness has suffered a check. In fact, the six summer 
months are, as sportsmen say, " a close-time " for friends. 

But winter — winter in Edinburgh ! The very words 
bring up a hundred pictures, a hundred memories. 
What sunsets we have ! What sudden views of frost- 
bound landscape ! What grand skies ! 

" Winter in Edinburgh " — when we hear the words 
in summer, as we lie lazily on the hot, honey-scented 
moors, we first shiver at the thought of mist and cold, 
and of what Gavin Douglas described — 

" The frosty region ringes of the year, 
The time and season bitter cauld and pale. 

The plain streetis and every high way 
Was full of flushes, dubbes, mire and clay." 

And then we seem to feel the glow of fire and light 
and warmth and life, to see the brilliant rooms, to hear 
all the clash of good music and good talk. And then 
and there among the heather, with the untroubled blue 
sky overhead, and the silence broken only by the bees 
among the honey, we shut our eyes and let the pictures 



80 Edinburgh 

concentrate themselves into two or three : — the mirrors 
at the end of the Assembly Rooms reflecting the moving 
crowd of dancers, — the " glimmer of satin and shimmer 
of pearls," and the brilliance of the uniforms. Or we 
hear the sudden music of fife and drum, thrilling and 
arresting, and see the kilted soldiers swing down the 
Mound from the Castle, and march along Princes Street, 
with the little ragged boys, and all the slouching, un- 
trained young men, running or shuffling along the pave- 
ment beside them. Somehow it always recalls the story 
of the Relief of Lucknow, — the far-off music of the 
pipes, the one Scotswoman who heard it first, — started 
up, listened, — recognized the air — " The Campbells 
are coming !" — and gave the glad news. 

Or we think of another picture, — of coming down 
the Mound about five o'clock on a winter's after- 
noon, with the great outline of the Castle blotted in 
Indian ink, battlements and walls and towers, against 
the red glow and radiance of the western sky, and Princes 
Street below, a line of clustering yellow lights in the 
gathering dusk, like a necklace of jewels. 

Until Christmas, the winter climate of Edinburgh is 
not so bad as grumblers pretend. Our summers — 
Tennyson was right — are often chillier than summers 
ought to be ; but at all times we have plenty of 
" weather," — fresh, keen, pure air, unstinted sunshine 
and winds, large expanses of sky, — and all the oxygen is 
to-day's allowance, not yesterday's complicated leavings. 
And in winter, — at any rate until Christmas, — we are 
warmer than our brethren in London. Indeed, in 
October and November we often have glorious weather 
— the " Indian Summer "as it is called. It is not until 
February or March that the east wind comes, and sweeps 




JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE. 



Winter in Edinburgh 81 

round our streets and squares, the " draughty parallelo- 
grams," as Louis Stevenson dubbed them, and drives 
all the loose papers and some of the hats before it, and 
the City becomes what Stevenson called it, " a downright 
meteorological purgatory." 

We generally expect and receive one fall of snow 
before Christmas,— happy the children if it come just 
at Christmas-time, — and perhaps a day or two of frost 
and of skating. Anxious inquiries are made as to 
whether Craiglockhart "is bearing." When it is, a 
" skating holiday " is given in the schools, and groups 
of people with jingling skates dangling from their hands 
hurry off for a day's pleasure on the ice. But the 
skating does not last long, and the snow melts and the 
sun returns, for most of the winter is due after Christ- 
mas — it is seldom that Duddingstone " is bearing," or 
that the ice on the canal is thicker than a canal boat, 
drawn by a thin, unhappy horse straining at his rope on 
the slippery towing-path, can manage to crash through. 

Happy the children, and happy also the artist, when 

the snow falls on Edinburgh ! 

© 

" Gardens in glory and balm in the breeze — 

Ah, pretty Summer, e'en boast as you please ! 

Sweet are your gifts ; but to winter we owe 

Snow on the Ochils and sun on the snow." 

But winter brings other visitors to Edinburgh besides 
the snow. It brings seagulls and owls and wild geese. 
The seagulls come from the Firth of Forth, — poor things, 
they are starving, and they come with harsh, hungry 
cries, and great white wings. If you put bread out for 
the birds all winter, as every well-conducted person does, 
on the doorsteps or window-sills, or in the garden if you 
have one, you well know what happens. The cocky 
little sparrows come first, and perhaps a tame, smart 

ed. n 



82 Edinburgh 

little robin ; and then, shyly and hesitatingly, and then 
with sharp, angry pecks and dabs, come the bigger birds, 
— thrushes and blackbirds, — " mavis and merle " we call 
them in Scotland. Soon there is quite a crowd of birds 
making short work of the crumbs. But with the first 
frost come the gulls, dwarfing even the great big black 
rooks, and the crumbs are strangely inadequate, and huge 
basins of porridge or scraps and crusts have to be pro- 
vided for thesewhite-winged Vikings from the North Sea. 
The owls and the wild geese are more rare visitors, 
but they do come ; and it appears they used to come in 
Gavin Douglas's day, for he speaks of them : 

" Horned Hetawd, which clepe we the nicht-owl 
Within her cavern heard I shout and howl, 
Laithly of form, with crooked camshow beak : 
Ugsome to hear was her wild eldritch shriek. 
The wild geese, claiking eke by nichtes tide, 
Attowe the city fleeand heard I glide." 

Our language has changed since Gavin Douglas's 
time ; but the languages of the horned night-owls and 
of the wild geese have not. The hideous shriek that 
proceeds from the distorted beak is just what disturbed 
the poet in Edinburgh in the year 1512, when he was 
Provost of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles. And the 
wild geese still, in severe winters, " claik " by night-time, 
" fleeand " round about the city. 

In the winter of 1909-10 there were spells of intense 
cold, and they brought both owls and wild geese among 
us. The wild geese swept high over the gloomy pillars 
and propriety of Moray Place, and were lost to sight ; 
but the owls stayed for some time, and, like little children, 
were heard and not seen. " They start to hoot at about 
nine every evening," a young Scot reported ; and it was 
true. They seemed to have come into town for the 



Winter in Edinburgh 83 

winter, and to have taken up their residence in the 
Moray Place Gardens and the Dean Gardens, on either 
side of the Water of Leith, and in the beautiful 
Botanic Gardens and Arborituum ; and from these 
comfortable surroundings they called to one another 
eerie remarks across the valley, and vied with the fog 
signals from the Forth, which also generally " start to 
hoot " about nine o'clock. 

In winter another cry is heard in Edinburgh, neither 
owls nor fog signals, but quite as weird as either. It is 
the cry of our fishwives. " Caller herrin' " we are all 
familiar with, from the song ; but there is also " Caller 
haddie," and, more rare, " Caller Oo," and, most rare, 
" Caller Partin !" " Caller Oo !" is only heard if the 
name of the month has the letter R in it, for " Caller 
Oo " means fresh oysters, and we all know that oysters 
are not in season unless the month has an R in it. So 
we hear " Caller Oo !" cried in the winter evenings, and 
a beautiful minor cry it is, drawn out plaintively on a 
minor seventh. 

" Those commiserating sevenths — ' Life might last ! we can but try !' " 

And life generally does last to those who try the 
oysters out of the picturesque fishwife's creel. 

Far back in the centuries, native oysters used to be 
very cheap indeed in Edinburgh, and Edinburgh, — cosy 
and learned but not wealthy,— used to eat a great many, 
especially for supper. So many, indeed, that the builders 
used the shells for cement, and there are still some 
very old houses in Edinburgh where one can see the 
oyster-shells embedded in the cement between the 
stones of the rough rubble walls. So we may feel that 
we are keeping up the traditions of the town when we 
eat oysters. 



84 Edinburgh 

" Caller Partin " means fresh crabs ; and there are 
some loyal Scots who are patriotic enough to speak of a 
certain delicacy to be discovered at ball suppers and 
dainty luncheon parties as " partin tart." 

The last two General Elections have taken place in 
winter. Even at these times of public anxiety over 
great issues, and of universal upheaval and excitement, 
Edinburgh remains calm. It would seem as if the fall 
of a Ministry and the fate of an Empire disturb many 
an honest person less than it would disturb him if the 
One O'clock Gun did not go off. That indeed would 
be something to talk about ! The evening papers 
would be full of it, with big headlines, and the boys 
crying it in the streets — " News ! — 'Spatch ! News ! — 
'Spatch !" And those who paused to read the posters 
in the gutters would see : 

"Unprecedented Occurrence in Edinburgh." 

"Account by Eyewitness on Calton Hill." 

" Guests all late at Civic Luncheon." 

But a General Election ? — There was a deaf man 
resident in Edinburgh who did not record his vote. 
He had not heard there was an Election. 

But on the actual Polling Day itself, especially towards 
evening, some degree of interest is exhibited, and crowds 
gather about the Polling stations, and outside the Scots- 
man Office, and a few public-spirited people flash about 
in motors, or roll or rattle along in carriages or carts, 
with the ribbons of their party fluttering in streamers 

behind, and " Vote for " tied on behind. It is an 

ill wind that blows nobody good, and Polling Day is a 
happy time for the little street gamins, for the Board 
Schools are used as Polling stations, and so perforce 
they are given a holiday. There is no need to complain 



Winter in Edinburgh 85 

of apathy on their parts. They gather in noisy, chatter- 
ing, excited, bickering crowds outside the Polling booths, 
and they snatch at the fluttering streamers of gay ribbons 
and run off with them. The little Radicals are hot 
politicians ; and at last Election they had been drilled 
all over Scotland, and taught to sing a specially written 
Election song to the martial air of " Tramp, tramp, 
tramp, the boys are marching !" They formed quite a 
feature of the Election tumult, marching in good order 
about the streets, with cars and banners, all singing 
shrilly, as they tramped in unison — " Vote, vote, vote 

for " And here the name of whoever was the 

Radical candidate for the special constituency had been 
ingeniously worked somehow into the metre. Poor 
mites ! They did their parts well ; and they probably 
knew just as much as many of their fathers. 

The electors of Edinburgh needed all the urging that 
could be given as that winter's day wore to a close. 
The Country needed their votes ; yes, — but it was pitch 
dark and snowing heavily. Thick, great, soft flakes fell 
on Conservative and Radical alike, till to outward seem- 
ing there was nothing to choose between them, and all 
were white and pure and shriven. Certainly there was 
nothing to choose between the Radical and the Con- 
servative posters, for the snow had drifted swiftly and 
silently against them, till each one was literally carte 
blanche^ and the electioneering promises in blue and red 
were obliterated altogether, as is so often the fate of 
electioneering promises. The white boards caused great 
merriment among the sandwich-men in charge, and the 
passers by joined in and jeered at them. 

" Who's your man ?" 

" Who are you for ?" 



86 Edinburgh 

Down the street at a quick trot came a small urchin 
with a big board tied round his neck. Boy and board 
were both white with snow. 

" Hi, my laddie !" called the men to him, " who 
are you for ?" 

The little fellow swept his ragged coat sleeve down 
the face of his board. 

" I'm for Bovril /" he cried, with consequence and 
pride. 

And sure enough, the layer of snow removed, there, 
printed in huge letters, was the advertisement, " Vote 
for Bovril." 

Shouts of applause nearly overwhelmed the sturdy 
little urchin. 

" Ay, my laddie, you're recht ! Yours is the best 
man ! Wish we had him !" they all cried, stamping 
their feet in the snow. 

But the thought of snow in Edinburgh recalls another 
scene — as impressive a scene as any that Edinburgh has 
ever beheld. 

It was nearly ten years ago, in the High Street, — that 
ancient street that has witnessed all the history of Scot- 
land. The people of Edinburgh had gathered there to 
hear a Proclamation from the City Cross, — a new Cross 
now, on the model of the old, and erected on its site 
beside St. Giles's Church and Parliament House, and 
close to where the " Heart of Midlothian," marked on 
stones of the pavement, shows where the old Tolbooth 
of many memories stood. 

The whole of the street was crowded, and every 
window and stair was filled with spectators. How often 
has this happened in the High Street all through the 
centuries ! How often have the citizens of Edinburgh 



Winter in Edinburgh 87 

filled their street to see a Royal procession pass, or a 
martyr driven to his death ; to watch a wild street fight, 
or to enjoy the pageantry of the " Riding of Parliament"! 
How often have they loyally decorated their " forestairs " 
and windows with rich tapestries and rugs hung over 
them, and crowded in that very street to cheer and wave 
and welcome home a very young royal bride for one of 
their brave Stewart kings ! How often have they 
assembled beside St. Giles's and Parliament House to 
hear a Royal Proclamation read by the Lyon King of 
Arms from the Mercat Cross ! 

Again they had gathered, that winter day in 1901, in 
the ancient, poverty-struck street, among the traditions 
of the Past. And snow had fallen on all the city, and 
left it white and silent, unsullied in its shroud. Oueen 
Victoria was dead ; and the citizens of Edinburgh had 
gathered to hear King Edward proclaimed King, — King 
Edward, the thirteenth generation, in direct descent, from 
James IV. of Scotland, whose marriage with Margaret 
Tudor united the Royal Families of Scotland and 
England, and led the way to the Union of the Crowns. 

Some of us were met on the Outlook Tower, high 
up beside the Castle. Thence we looked right down the 
whole length of the ancient mediaeval street descending 
the ridge to Holyrood through the centre of the massed 
Old Town of Edinburgh. It was an unforgettable scene. 
The mourning crowds ; the murky air, grey with yet 
unfallen snow ; the white roofs and gables ; the flashes 
of colour as the soldiers and heralds appeared in view ; 
the fanfare of trumpets through the snow ; the bared 
heads ; and then — suddenly all seemed to stand still, a 
moment of pause between the Past and the Future, for we 
heard the familiar strain of the National Anthem, and it 



88 Edinburgh 

was the first time we had heard it when it was no longer 
" God Save the Queen " that we sang. And through 
the music, and the snow-laden air, and the hushed 
crowds, came the sound of sobs. 

Only nine and a half years, — it seems yesterday. And 
again, so soon ! — another Proclamation has been read 
from the City Cross, — read this time on a balmy day in 
May. And while the solemn salute crashed from the 
Argyle Battery at the Castle, and the echoes beat and 
reverberated and thundered against the mountain sides, 
as far as the Ochils across the Forth, and back against 
the lion front of Arthur's Seat — the Pentlands — Corstor- 
phine — and then found their way against the great street 
fronts of the City, making the hearts of those who 
heard throb and their hands clench, while the thoughts 
and the faces were serious and sad, — the brilliant sun- 
shine blazed down on the black-garbed crowds that 
moved about the streets, and on the gay Spring flowers 
and green grass in the Princes Street gardens below the 
Castle, and on the flags that were raised from half-mast. 
Was the sunshine an omen ? God save the King ! 

CHAPTER XI 

EDINBURGH IN SUMMER 

Summer comes upon us gradually in Edinburgh. First 
there is a sudden balmy day in March. The fire in the 
breakfast-room is much too hot, and the wide-opened 
window admits the music of a blackbird, and a scent of 
burning wood in the air, wafted from the fields round the 
town where they are gathering bonfires of rubble. Some 
people's thoughts, under the influence of this day, are 
driven to "Spring cleaning," and the thoughts of others 




'A.utlft^i 



LADY STAIR'S CLOSE. 



Edinburgh in Summer 89 

to Spring holidays, and the fancies of yet others lightly 
turn to thoughts of Spring clothes. 

Next day it is bitterly cold again, and the sun over- 
sleeps himself under a mass of clouds, and winter is 
sulkily resumed. 

Then come the showers and sunshine of April, and 
with them a whisper of green begins to breathe over the 
trees in the gardens, and the birds are quite happy and 
very noisy. This lasts a full fortnight, when even the 
grumblers have nothing to say. And then a snowstorm ; 
and the buds wither with indignation, and the snow 
lies on the flowering currant and buries the crocuses, 
and the poor little songsters all come back to the 
windows to be fed and comforted. 

But this must be the last snow, we tell one another ; 
and no doubt the birds tell one another too. And, sure 
enough, in a few days the snow begins to melt, and melts 
very quickly, and discovers several intrepid crocuses 
none the worse, and the sun blazes out again, and in the 
gardens the great leaves of the chestnuts unfold, and the 
wallflowers make the air fragrant, and — 

" The winter it is past, and the summer's come at last, 
And the small birds sing on every tree." 

In the streets, the shops begin to deck their windows 
with " Spring goods," and every grey stone street of 
dwelling-houses is cold as mid- Winter on the side where 
the sun is not, and hot as mid-Summer on the side 
where the sun shines. And people catch colds. 

On the First of May, in old Catholic days in Scotland, 
there used to be great merrymaking, and May Day 
revels and sports. Bands of people went about dressed 
up as Robin Hood and Little John, acting, and playing 
practical jokes. Unfortunately these frolics and games 

ED. 12 



90 Edinburgh 

became very noisy and rough, and ended in being 
drunken riots, and instead of trying to revive them and 
make them pretty harmless pastimes for the people 
again, the authorities simply tried to put a stop to them. 
Queen Mary herself wrote to the magistrates of Edin- 
burgh to tell them to end " Robin Hood's Day " ; and 
though it survived Queen Mary's orders, how could 
foolish frolics survive the sober days of stern Presbyterians, 
who would not let a bird sing in its cage on Sunday ? 

To this day, however, energetic citizens climb to the 
top of Arthur's Seat on May Day morning. If it be fine, 
by five o'clock one or two people reach the summit, and 
before eight o'clock over a thousand will be gathered. 
A contemporary writer states that this is " a last remnant 
of the worship of Baal," and that the custom is kept up 
by " the young of the female sex particularly." But it 
is noteworthy that the two instances he immediately gives 
of citizens who used to regularly climb Arthur's Seat 
before breakfast on the First of May, presumably to wash 
their faces in the dew, were neither of them " the young 
of the female sex," — one of the active old gentlemen 
being indeed over eighty ! 

Later on in May comes the Assembly week, when the 
Lord High Commissioner as representing the Sover- 
eign, takes up his residence in Holyrood, and presides 
over the Annual Assembly of the Established Church 
of Scotland, which, as some few English people do not 
quite realize, is the Presbyterian Church. The United 
Free Church and the Free Church also have their 
Assemblies at this time, and it is a busy week in Edin- 
burgh, and the streets are full of ministers. A great 
many ministers and elders come from all parts of Scotland 
to " attend the Assemblies," and you see them with their 



Edinburgh in Summer 91 

wives and daughters, or their clerical brethren, walking 
about and looking at the sights of the town. And 
there are special functions going on all day. On the 
first day of all, the Commissioner, — who is a Scottish 
peer whose politics are in accord with those of the 
Government of the moment, — drives in procession 
through the town, to open the Assembly. It is a sort 
of shadow of the " Riding of the Parliament " of an 
older day. The Established Church and the United 
Free Church and the Free Church has each its 
" Moderator " elected for the year, and it is the custom 
for these Moderators to entertain all and sundry by 
giving breakfasts before the business of the day begins. 
Then there are the sittings of the Assemblies, before 
which all matters of Church doctrine and discipline 
and politics are discussed and decided. In the evening 
there are dinners and levees and receptions at Holyrood, 
and sometimes the Lord High Commissioner gives a 
garden-party in the historic grounds of the old Palace 
of the Stewarts. It usually rains heavily. 

Every year people seem to go away from town earlier 
than the year before. Some go in May, and a few 
houses, here and there, are shut up, and the windows 
filled with brown paper. Others go in June, and more 
houses stand empty. Those who have children at school 
are kept till July, when the schools " break up." But 
by the beginning of July Edinburgh is growing deserted, 
and by the end of the month, if you are in town, you 
walk about among the dull, grey, dignified streets and 
find every window papered inside with brown paper, and 
even some of the doors boarded up, so that the paint 
may not blister and crack with the summer's sunshine 
before the family comes back to town at the beginning of 



92 Edinburgh 

winter. And in these days the grass grows up, green 
and tender, between the stones of the roads, and there 
will be quite a luxuriant crop along the edges of the 
pavements, and wherever it can break through. Flocks 
of footsore, silly sheep, driven through to Market or 
slaughter, have quite a " find," and nibble and crop round 
the curb-stones in front of stately, sombre mansions, 
where in winter judges wend their homeward way, or 
carriages and motor cars wait. It is an epitome of the life 
of the town — the romantic Past springing up fresh and 
vivid through the unimpressionable conventionality of 
the material present. For was not Moray Place " My 
lord of Moray's grounds " ? And was not Princes 
Street " The Lang Dykes " ? 

But in summer, though its " residential quarters " are 
like a city of the dead, — rows of empty houses staring 
with blind, closed eyes at a deserted, grass-grown street, 
— Edinburgh is not empty. An exodus of the Citizens 
has taken place, but an influx of tourists has poured into 
the City. The familiar faces are gone ; but the town is 
flooded by a new population. Every hotel is crowded. 
The shops are prepared for them, and the shop windows 
are full of tartans and Harris tweeds, rugs and shawls, 
knitted goods, knickerbocker stockings and " Tarn o' 
Shanters," with pieces of heather laid on the top of 
them. Even the boot shops have their goods im- 
bedded in banks of heather. Other windows are filled 
with guide-books and picture postcards, with views of 
the Castle, of the Scott Monument and Princes Street, 
of a fishwife in her pretty dress, of Louis Stevenson in 
his velvet coat, of the Forth Bridge, of the soldiers 
being drilled on the Castle Esplanade, of the High 
Street and John Knox's house in a snowstorm. A 



Edinburgh in Summer 93 

third shop is full of clan brooches, pebbles, cairngorms 
and amethysts, and Queen Mary heart monograms in 
silver. Little boys run about in Princes Street selling 
sprigs of white heather, and others waylay tourists at 
the foot of the Mound, shouting " Guide to the Castle ! 
— Guide to Edinburgh Castle, one penny !" Great 
motor " char-a-bancs " start from the " Waverley steps " 
at the east end of Princes Street, and drive right along 
it, and out by the beautiful broad country road, the 
Queensferry Road, to the Forth Bridge. And the 
tourists stand about on the steps of the hotels, guide- 
book in hand, and gaze up at the Castle, and at the 
lion shape of Arthur's Seat, and they go to see all the 
proper sights. 

They drive or walk up from Holyrood to the 
Castle, or down from the Castle to Holyrood. Half- 
way on the steep street they look over John Knox's 
house, and at the relics collected there. They go 
into St. Giles's Church, and are told the lively tale 
of Jenny Geddes and her militant tactics, and divide 
their attention between her and the tombs of Montrose 
and Moray and Argyle. They peep into Parliament 
House, and into the Parliament Hall, empty if the 
Courts have " risen," — they cross to the Municipal 
Buildings, and see some of the signs of our luxurious 
civic life, and they discover the museum there. If 
they have time they go also to see the University and 
the McEwan Hall, and the Public Library. And no 
tourist will fail to go into Greyfriars Churchyard, where 
George Buchanan's grave bears his mask — familiar to 
all readers of Blackwood's Magazine ; where so many 
wonderful old tombs bear interesting names ; where 
" Greyfriars Bobby " kept his faithful watch for years 



94 Edinburgh 

on his master's grave, — (and Baroness Burdett-Coutts 
raised a little effigy to him too, outside the sacred 
precincts, over a water trough where other dogs may 
lap) ; where the Covenant was signed on the flat tomb- 
stones, and the Covenanters were imprisoned, and the 
Martyrs Monument commemorates them ; and where 
Sir Walter Scott met his first love under an umbrella 
in a shower of rain. 

Then the tourist will wander about the New Town, and 
find it dusty and deserted. There are some sights here 
to see, — St. Mary's Cathedral, the largest ecclesiastical 
building reared in Britain since the Reformation, save 
Truro Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Cathedral at 
Westminster. There is also the National Gallery and 
the National Portrait Gallery for those who love Art, 
and the view from either side of Dean Bridge for those 
who love Nature. And if the tourist have a free after- 
noon, and it is fine, he may wander farther, and admire 
the marvellous landscape gardening and the show of 
flowers at the Botanic Gardens ; or walk round the 
Calton Hill and look at the views, and then turn into 
the Calton Burial ground and discover the grave of 
Hume, and the Martyrs Monument. 

But above all, those who love the Past and know 
anything of it will spend their time in the Old Town. 
They will investigate some of the tortuous closes and 
wynds, and people them with the men and women 
who lived in them hundreds of years ago. There is 
a Lady Stair's Close," built in 1622 by Sir William 
Grey of Pittendrum, a wealthy Scottish merchant of the 
days of Charles I., and one of those who was ruined by 
his faithfulness to the Royalist cause, and to the brave 
Montrose. His initials and those of his wife, and their 



Edinburgh in Summer 95 

Coat of Arms, are engraved over the entrance door 
inside the close, under the words " Feare the Lord 
and depart from eville." This close has been restored 
by Lord Rosebery, who is a lineal descendant of the 
builders , of it, Sir William Grey of Pittendrum and his 
wife. Early ,„ the eighteenth century, the house 
belonged to Lady Stair, the Dowager of the second 

} ° ?' r ' the famous Field Marshal ^d Ambassador 
and she hved here for many years, and was a great 
social figure in the Edinburgh life of her day, and 
celebrated for having the only black servant in the town 

James s Close is where Boswell lived, and Dr John- 
son stayed with him ; but the actual house was burnt 
down I„ Baxter's Close, however, is still the house in 
which Robert Burns lodged when he stayed in Edin- 
burgh in 1786. Opposite is Riddel's Close, where 
stands the house of the ill-fated Bailie Macmorran 
But any close is worth peeping into, however dirty 
for every close and every wynd has its history 
public or private, which it would take hours and 
volumes to tell.-Advocates' Close; Old Assembly 
Close, where the stately dancing and the formal love- 

R-tr w , th \, e i g J hteenth CentUr y were cond ^«l ; 
Bells Wynd; Niddry Street, where St. Cecilia's Hall 

still stands in squalid neglect,— the beautiful oval 

concert-room, once the centre of musical life in a music- 

loving town; Hyndeford Close, where Lady Anne 

Barnard, author of « Young Jamie lo'ed me wed," and 

correspondent of Lord Melville, lived. And the 

tourist will ask the reason why a new tavern hereabouts 

>s called Heave awa' Tavern," and has a young lad's 

head carved ,„ stone above it, and will be told the 

story of the brave boy who was among the thirty-five 



g6 Edinburgh 

people buried under the debris of an old house that fell 
here in 1861, and who was heard faintly to call from 
underneath the beams and masonry that hid him, to the 
rescuers who were digging, " Heave awa', chaps, I'm 
no deid yet!" 

Down in the Canongate there is Moray House with 
its balcony where Argyle and the wedding-party stood 
to watch Montrose driven by ; there is Queensberry 
House, now the House of Refuge ; there is White- 
horse Close, a fine old close, still intact ; there is the 
Canongate Tolbooth, standing out into the street ; and 
lastly there is the Canongate Churchyard, where so 
many of Edinburgh's famous dead lie, and where 
Robert Burns knelt and kissed the earth above the 
unmarked grave of the poet Fergusson. 

Having seen the town, the tourist will go on some 
of the many excursions, — perhaps mount one of the 
unwieldy motor coaches and drive to see Queensferry 
and the Forth Bridge ; certainly go to Roslin and walk 
through the " Den," and see the wonderful little 
Chapel ; and drive round the " Queen's Drive " that 
encircles Arthur's Seat, and visit Craigmillar Castle, 
where Queen Mary spent happy days. 

And then the tourists too, like the citizens, will 
leave Edinburgh to the sheep and the grass and the 
dust, and close their guide-books and journey on to the 
Highlands, — to the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, — and 
they will think that they have seen and know Edin- 
burgh, whereas they will only have had a little peep 
at it. 



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